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 pastor” is quite different than how many of us “members” are experiencing it.
From time to time [...]

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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 to care for and keep your volunteers.
Better meetings leave time for you to do other important things.

Proudfoot [...]

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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 hands at the end of worship. How do they stay healthy?  Many don’t. A pastor I [...]

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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! ..then discuss it and make plans to do something about it.
http://churchhealthtest.com/

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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 a pastor (DCE) worth their salt who wouldn’t rather be leading worship or teaching or being part of [...]

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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 focused on its own series of events and special offerings, and hobbled by the time constraints of [...]

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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 in human systems, renewing our enthusiasm and energy for something is a little more complicated. [...]

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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 church experiences answer that question with an unfortunate “no.”
The Wide Open Back Door…
We attended one church [...]

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Read my “On the Lam” blog thread and you’ll see why I think Hacking the Visitor process is so important:  churches screw it up!
Too often, visitors come in the front door and slip through the side door. Your job is to figure out how to WIDEN the front door, ie, get more visitors through it; [...]

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“Hack” = “to break into and rewrite the code.”  “to find a workaround that allows something to work.”
“Hacker” = “someone who rewrites a program, often unauthorized.”  Martin Luther was “an unauthorized hacker.”
My Hack Your Church! blog thread is a collection of my ideas and observations for HACKING (rethinking/revitalizing) church programming, especially CE programming and the WAY in [...]

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