Subscribe to this Blog
Click here to subscribe! Click the link and type your email address into Feedburner's form. This will send you a copy of my latest post via email every time one is added to this site.Post Categories
- Advice & Ideas for Pastors, Staff and Leaders
- Building a Better Church Website
- Christian Education ~ Ideas and Advice
- Green Jesus
- How to Be a Successful Teacher
- Ideas for Changing the Church
- Neil on the Loose
- Neil's "Brain" Articles
- Other Published Articles by Neil
- Tech Tips for Church Staff (and you)
- Videos & Books I Recommend
-
List of 25 Last Posts
- Ten Characteristics of a Healthy Youth Ministry
- Tashlikh -A New Year’s Ritual
- Rethinking Youth Ministry
- O that crazy perfect Teen Brain
- What the Pastor Shouldn’t Say
- Installing a “Fav” icon in your church website
- Problems with Pastoral Prayers
- How to open many websites with one click
- The Rising Cost of Driving to Church
- Memories, the Science of Commitment, and Rebalancing Teaching vs Worship
- The Problem with Teenage Sunday School Class
- The Christian Athiest (and online church)
- Performing Church Cleanup
- “Priming” -the science behind Sunday School
- Good Stories Really Do Get Inside Your Head
- Scanning the Congregation for Malware & Trojans
- More Ways to Cut the Church’s Utility Budget
- The Positive Effect of Even “Some” Attendance
- *Sigh* Quality Control (lacking) in the Church
- #4 – Great Teachers Lead Great Reading Sessions
- #3 – The Classroom Culture of Great Teachers
- #2 – Great Teachers Set High Expectations
- #1 – How to Get 6+ More Hours of Sunday School
- Wind vs Solar, and other energy saving strategies
- How to Add “Live Chat” to your Church Website
Category Archives: Ideas for Changing the Church
“Hack” Who Leads Your Church -and how they lead
One of the problems facing the church is the quality of leadership available to lead them. The skill sets needed to move the church forward are often not the skill sets we look for when selecting leaders. We need to … Continue reading
Volunteers: Why it may be hard to recruit them…
…and what you can do about it. Volunteers are a church program’s lifeblood and biggest challenge. I’ve seen it from all sides, -as a minister on staff, a program leader & recruiter, and as a volunteer in the pew, -in big … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas for Changing the Church
1 Comment
Scary Church Accounting
Church Accounting is positively scary in some churches…. and I’ve seen it from all sides. I’ve been on staff as a minister, and I’ve been a “pastor in the pew” as volunteer. I’ve also been doing business with churches for the … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas for Changing the Church
2 Comments
“The View from the Pew” …what I think every pastor needs to know
It has been an eye-opening experience sitting in the pew these past 14 years being a seminary-trained preacher and pastor. …..and I wish I knew then what I know now. Which is to say, the congregation and worship you experience as “the … Continue reading
Lead Better Meetings
Meetings are boon and bane in the church. How you lead a meeting, and how you train your chairpeople to lead meetings, can make the difference between success and failure. Better meetings are more productive. Better meetings are a way … Continue reading
Pass the Peace, -and the Hand Sanitizers
I am NOT a Germ-a-phobe or hypochondriac. I just have serious concerns about an age-old practice that creates problems in this day and age: the extent to which we pass BUGS around on Sunday morning. I’m particularly concerned about pastors: they shake EVERYBODY’S … Continue reading
Free Church Health Test
Tom Bandy and Bill Easum are two provocative church consultants. I recommend many of their resources found at www.easumbandy.com Several very good books and congregational studies. They have released a FREE downloadable test for your church, with instructions. Take it! … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas for Changing the Church
Leave a comment
Hack your Church Office
Hack your office schedule, and hack “the nag” on your computer. The church office is a tyrant! It creates a certain type of work (often busy-work), and turns a pastor (aka “someone who pastors”) into an office troll. I’ve never met … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas for Changing the Church
Leave a comment
Make Mission part of Every Group’s Mission
Hack the way mission gets done in the church… The mission of the Mission Committee is to increase everyone’s participation in giving back. But in most churches, the mission committee is LIMITED in what it can accomplish because it is … Continue reading
Posted in Ideas for Changing the Church
Leave a comment
The Jubilee Solution to Your Church’s Rut
All systems tend to run out of steam. In physics, this law of thermodynamics is called “entropy.” Happens in human systems too. In physics, all that’s required is some additional amount of energy to maintain the same output (“work”). But … Continue reading
The Wide Open Backdoor
Back Door = The door your members use to slip away from the congregation. If you suddenly stopped showing up, would anybody notice? More importantly, would anybody do anything about it? You’d like to THINK so. But our last three … Continue reading
The Wide Open Side Door
This is another installment in my “On the Lam” blog. The following is another post about something important I learned the hard way. I hope you can use these observations to improve your church’s ministry. The Wide Open Side Door… … Continue reading