The Future for the Suburban Church: Poorer, Denser, Grayer, and More Diverse

February 3, 2010

The fastest growing area of poverty in the United States is in the suburb. The Brookings Institute released a report in January that details the change in the U.S. poor population by community type. Here’s one of many findings in their report: Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities. Read more [...]

Bad Boss Pastors Who Drive You Nuts

January 27, 2010

Pastors can have two personas: one the congregation sees and one the staff sees. While the goal is to be the same person around everyone, it often does not play out. The reality is you act differently around staff you work with for hours on end each day, compared to other congregants you may see in passing once or twice a week. This dichotomy is not necessarily bad, but it can be when the pastor plays nice with the congregation while poorly leading the staff. Maltreating the staff places them in Read more [...]

Statistical Snapshots Worth Noting

January 21, 2010

Stats are like still photographs—they reveal something about a specific place and time. One of the greatest sources for stats in the United States is the Statistical Abstract, published annually. It’s been around a long time (since 1878), and it is often used as a gauge for other national studies. Robert J. Samuelson recently reported on the just-released 2010 abstract. Here are some interesting tidbits about our culture as it stands today: 76% of Americans drive to work alone. Only 10% carpool, Read more [...]

Tracking the Millennials

January 3, 2010

The Pew Research Center will begin a large project in 2010 involving the millennial generation (according to them, this generation represents those born between 1981 and 2000). It’s one to watch—I’m sure many of the results will reveal important insights into the next generation. Here’s a snippet explaining their research: Generations, like people, have personalities. Their collective identities typically begin to reveal themselves when their oldest members move into their teens and twenties Read more [...]

How Important is Religion in Your State?

December 28, 2009

The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life has ranked each state according to how religious it is. While they recognize the difficulty in defining the term “religious,” they have provided four separate measures for the ranking system—the importance of religion in people's lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer, and absolute certainty of belief in God. Who’s number one? Mississippi (in every category). Second place goes to Alabama (for importance of religion). Read more [...]

Barna’s Themes for 2009

December 26, 2009

Researcher George Barna recently offered a synthesis of his research in which he reveals four major themes of 2009. The first theme is not a surprise: Increasingly, Americans are more interested in faith and spirituality than in Christianity. People say they have faith, but they are detached from Christianity. What’s surprising are Barna’s reasons for this detachment. Barna sees two major reasons why Christianity is no longer attractive. First, mass media has “unfavorably caricatured” Read more [...]

The Consensus Camel

December 13, 2009

Perhaps you’ve heard a version of the saying “a camel is a horse designed by church committee.” The statement is a bit unfair, but also quite humorous. It’s humorous because there’s an element of truth to it. But it’s unfair because any group of people—not just committees—can lose sight of the original goal. What creates a camel out of a horse? There’s a lurking danger in every team brainstorming session and every committee meeting. It’s consensus. Most probably think of consensus Read more [...]

Figuring Out What Ideas Fit

December 4, 2009

One of the blessings of leading a church is equipping the saints and watching God work through them. One of the challenges of leading a church is knowing when to redirect a passionate church member’s ideas. Some ideas are easy to recognize as flops—like the time I heard from someone who wanted to buy a multi-million dollar golf course for sports ministry. It just wasn’t for us. Most of the time, however, discernment is more difficult when passionate church members have bold and grand plans Read more [...]

Budgeting and Staffing the Simple Church

November 23, 2009

The Simple Church idea revolutionized how churches view their disciple-making process. First, the what becomes the how - a clear process flows from what disciples look like. Key programs are then placed along the process. Next, ministries are united around this process. Last, anything outside the process is eliminated. Being a new pastor at an established church, I have begun learning all our ministries. Many of them are excellent. But my responsibility is now using these ministries to create a Read more [...]

A Simple Idea to Invigorate Corporate Prayer

November 12, 2009

You inherit a lot when you’re a new pastor at an established church. Being the new guy at FBC Murray, I did not realize until I got here how important prayer is to this church. I’ve been blessed to inherit such a healthy attitude about prayer among the people. We pray collectively every Wednesday evening. The church recognizes the importance of both corporate and private prayer times. I love praying with my church family for many reasons, but it’s most exciting because they are so passionate. There’s Read more [...]