By Jen Miles and Jason Morris
When you think about helping people grow spiritually, Bible engagement and discipleship are probably at the top of your list. What if your congregation engaged with the Bible in meaningful ways every day? (more…)
By Adam McLaughlin
There’s no shortage of ideas to communicate to our church members, and they all seem to creep into our announcements and church emails. Soon we’re communicating everything about everything—which becomes noise—instead of communicating a few things with intentionality. [Read more…]
Ready for the most important insight about moving to online church services? It’s not simply live streaming a church service.
I like how Benjamin Windle, founder and pastor of Lifeplace Church in Australia, puts it: “Adding a live stream and thinking that’s the solution is like a university adding a camera into a lecture room and calling it ‘online campus.’ It’s not the full expression of what a campus is; it’s just a camera feed.”1 [Read more…]
By Douglas Estes
The first known online church was founded 35 years ago, in a time before live streaming and Instagram. In a sense, though, online church is really not new.
From the persecution of the early Church to the outbreak of the Black Death to the battlefields of World War I to the modern political climate in Iran, the dispersed people of God have faced countless situations requiring them to meet at a distance, by extension, or online. These situations are not our typical experience in the West, where we often perceive the Church as an institution rather than a gathering. [Read more…]
No church leader wants to admit it, but for many of us it’s true: we still don’t have a sustainable habit for personal Bible study and prayer. Here are five ways forward—true for anyone, church leader or not. [Read more…]
By Brian Beauford
Every church needs a church leadership pipeline—a system for identifying, training, equipping, and empowering leaders. In my experience, a healthy leadership pipeline has six levels: [Read more…]
By Ryan J. Pemberton
“Is this something we do?” I remember asking when I first heard the word “Lent.”
Even though my father is Catholic, I grew up in a Protestant house where Lent, Ash Wednesday, and fasting were as exotic as Rome, the pope, and crucifixes. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I saw Christians with crosses of ash smeared on their foreheads and heard of friends giving up coffee or chocolate for a season. [Read more…]
By Casey Corum
Songs are [some of] the building blocks of our gathered worship times. And every week we have the privilege of selecting a group of songs that our congregations will sing back to God. This is serious business. If we do our job well, our song choices can provide a “sonic sanctuary” where people meet with the living God. [Read more…]
By Jeremy Poland
Every year, we take more and more photos of weekly services, events, and facilities to showcase our church in a digital age. This mass of photos easily becomes an ominous, disorganized folder on a desktop, or maybe it’s getting carried around in a pile of SD camera cards.
When we receive a request for a photo for a social post, a website banner, or an event promo slide, it always seems to be urgent. There isn’t time to sift through the archive and find the perfect image. How can this hunt be simplified? [Read more…]
By Amber Smith and Matthew Boffey
Social media for churches is about relationships. And just like any relationship, a little goes a long way—as long as the little is consistent.
Here are 10 easy wins for an effective social media presence. [Read more…]