by Joel Snider | Feb 11, 2020 | leadership
A church leader in another community told me about his former pastor, who had taken an assessment of his leadership style. The results showed that this pastor was the rarest type in the assessment’s scale. He was among five percent of leaders classified as...
by Bill Wilson | Feb 4, 2020 | discernment, future
Which do you live by: Clock or compass? If the clock dictates, your life is consumed with the immediate and pressing issues of the moment. Clock-life is focused on short-term results. If the clock rules, you find yourself racing from event to event in a mad...
by Tracy Hartman | Feb 4, 2020 | Uncategorized
Our Methodist colleagues in Minnesota made national news this week as they made the difficult decision to close and relaunch the Cottage Grove campus of the Woodbury United Methodist Church. The decision, which left the church’s older members feeling disenfranchised,...
by Barry Howard | Jan 21, 2020 | pastor search process
The process of searching for a new pastor is one of the most crucial and important seasons in the life of a church. During this season, there is often grief over the resignation or retirement of the previous pastor, and there is both excitement and anxiety...
by Matt Cook | Jan 14, 2020 | hope
In the 1950’s a somewhat morbid experiment was conducted by a professor at Johns Hopkins University named Curt Richter. He put wild rats in a container of water and forced them to swim as long as they could before drowning. Most of the rats swam for only a few...
by Bill Wilson | Jan 7, 2020 | future
The 2020’s are upon us, and while I am not interested in speculation, I believe it is important to stop and assess what our current trends suggest we will be dealing with in the coming decade. Here are some very initial and quite limited thoughts about what is before...
by Matt Cook | Dec 31, 2019 | healthy ministry
When is the last time you noticed a vibration in your car? I’m not a car guy. If my car starts and gets me where I need to go I might not notice some small things that need fixing. When I’m driving down the road and my car starts to shake,...
by Barry Howard | Dec 24, 2019 | worship
At most of the churches I have served, the annual Christmas Eve service is a treasured gathering in the life of the church. And it is usually a well-attended service, second only to the worship service on Easter Sunday.In our church family’s tradition, the Christmas...
by Bob Dale | Dec 17, 2019 | change
So, is your church stuck and can’t move forward? Are you wondering how to lead it out of its well-worn ruts? Churches are conserving groups by nature. Our communities of faith have a precious Message to protect and share. That’s our...
by Tracy Hartman | Dec 10, 2019 | Adapting
Adaptive leadership, it’s all the buzz these days. From early work by Ron Heifetz, to more recent books like Sailboat Church by Joan Gray and Canoeing the Mountains by Todd Bolsinger, everyone is talking about the reality that many of our old ways of doing things...
