Going directly from a call to preach to leading a church is extremely rare. Good! Preachers need the maturation that comes from serving with or under another pastor, before leading their own congregation. Yet many associate ministers wish they could just skip this process. Pastors treat associates as flunkies. Congregations neglect the vital role associate ministers play. Members view associates as step-parents, substitute teachers, or “garbage-time” bench riders. It can be discouraging. But it doesn’t have to be. Your time as an associate minister can be an affirmation of your ministerial call, a time of spiritual development, and a fruitful...

On the day of judgment preachers will not be asked where they went to seminary or whether they earned any advanced degrees. They will not need to present membership statistics or submit their annual budgets. It will not matter how popular they were or whether they could make people laugh. instead, when they stand before the heavenly tribunal they will be asked, "Did you preach the word?" Those who followed their own agenda - or even worse, the world's agenda - will hang their heads in shame. But many humble preachers, who were held in little esteem, will shine in...

A certain woman who jumped from church to church decided that she was not at the right place. She informed her pastor, “Well, I believe it’s time for me to move again.” Mustering a rare forthrightness, he replied, “That’s okay. It does not matter that much when you change labels on an empty bottle.” Of course, there are legitimate times and reasons to move your membership from one church to another. Conscience and conviction may require you to leave a church. In most instances, relocation results in the need to find a new church home. There is a list of...

You have heard of C.M.E. Christians, haven't you? This has nothing to do with a particular denomination. C.M.E. Christians are in every church. They are people who only come to church on Christmas, Mother's Day, and Easter Sunday. Get it? Ironically, C.M.E. Christians are usually not true Christians. They are nominal Christians, at best. They have enough religion to come to church  on these special occasions on the Christian calendar. But you most likely will not see them again... until the day Christian holiday. During weeks like this, we pastors are prone to complain about the many C.M.E. Christians who...

The longer a congregation exists, the more concerned it tends to become with self-preservation - and the less concerned with its original purpose. Time, money, staff, and even the prayers become increasingly inward-focused. The result, not surprisingly, is that the church stops growing. The foremost principle says that leaders must keep, or turn, the focus of their church away from themselves and back to their primary goal -and Christ's primary goal - of making disciples. This happens through prayer, engaging the Bible, programming, budget, staffing, and evaluating all the church's ministries on their contribution to increasing the number of Christian...

I am a loyal Gospel Music fan. For years, I have joyfully collected Gospel CD recordings. More recently, I download music from iTunes. And I rarely go anywhere without my iPod. Keys, wallets, cell phone, and iPod - don’t leave home without them! I love Gospel Music. Praise and worship. Traditional. Contemporary. Old school. New school. You name it. I like it, except for quartet music (Oops). Sorry. Really, I just love music. But I especially love Gospel Music. However, most of the Gospel Music on my iPod, I would absolutely freak out to hear performed in an actual worship...

The hard truth: God cares more about the holiness of a congregation than He does the size of the congregation. Using numerical benchmarks to somehow size up the blessing God pours out on a congregation or to evaluate members' ability to stay faithful to the guidelines of Scripture lacks spiritual maturity and reveals our reliance on human understanding in our vain attempts to build the kingdom of God through our own methods. -Thomas White & John M. Yeats, Franchising McChurch, p. 63 Why has the church bought into the lie that only big churches can win in the battle against...

A certain woman who jumped from church to church decided that she was not at the right place. She informed her pastor, “Well, I believe it’s time for me to move again.” Mustering a rare forthrightness, he replied, “That’s okay. It does not matter that much when you change labels on an empty bottle.” Of course, there are legitimate times and reasons to move your membership from one church to another. Conscience and conviction may require you to leave a church. In most instances, relocation results in the need to find a new church home. And there is a list...

I received my December edition of Christianity Today magazine this week. As as I read through the letter "Readers Write" section, as I usually do, a named jumped out at me - John Piper. Yep. That John Piper.The October 2008 edition of CT featured an article on several prominent churches in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul (MN). John Piper, who pastors the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and whose congregation was featured in the article, wrote the the following letter to CT in response to the article:     I apologize for a sentence quoted from me in the recent...

The McChurch has replaced the traditional church and its relational values. Fast-food Christians pull up to ecclesiastical drive-through windows, order the McGroups, consume the experience and then drive off, discarding relationships like burger wrappers on the highway of life. Savvy church growth pastors quickly learned that significant growth can occur if a church learns how to market it burgers to capture the appetite of this roving crowd. In some instances merely producing an interesting alternative to the status quo can lead to significant church disaffections. - William Chadwick, Stealing Sheep, p. 20 Transfer growth, be definition, creates no numerical growth...