10 Things I Learned About Revitalizing Churches (Part 1)

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It’s appointment season in the United Methodist Church, which means many pastors are finding themselves in new churches, and they are hoping to revitalize their congregations. While I am passionate about it, I’m by no means an expert on the subject. So I took the outline from a recent workshop I attended, lead by Ron Edmonson. He happens to be a guru on the subject (my words, not his) who has demonstrated how to effectively add new life to established churches.

So, here are five things he shared as important to know, with my insight added. Part two will come next week.  Continue reading →

4 Leadership Lessons from a Piano Bar…

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Piano-Bar-Ronnie-Shelton

The other night, I had the chance to go to a dueling piano bar with some colleagues. Here’s how the whole thing works: there are two piano players who take requests. They go back and forth taking the lead on playing these songs. Usually they both play during a song, but sometimes one will take a break.

There were some great lessons in leadership that I watched on display there, and I wanted to share them with you. Continue reading →

Swiss Army Pastor…

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When I was ten, I got my first Swiss Army knife. It came with a two-inch blade, screwdriver bits, a nail file, bottle opener, and a can opener. It was awesome. I felt like I could do any and everything suddenly. Who needs all of those different screwdrivers from the hardware store? Why even bother getting another can opener? Not only do I have all of those in one tool, but I have all of them IN MY POCKET!

So you can imagine my disappointment when it began to dawn on me that sometimes you do need different screwdrivers.

There are a lot of pastors that try to be a ‘Swiss Army’ pastor. Maybe they feel like the church needs them to be, or they want to be that indispensible, or some combination of both. I think the job of ‘pastor’ is fairly susceptible to developing this ‘all things to all people’ mentality. For starters, there are a wide variety of tasks and skills that pastor need to have in order to do their job well. I mean, a day can consist of researching 6th century Mesopotamia for a sermon, visiting homebound, and helping draft a budget proposal, all before a worship team meeting later that night.

So here are some thoughts on pastors being the churches Swiss Army Knives of ministry: Continue reading →

Peculiar People…

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Scott Derrickson is a deeply dedicated Christian. He went to Biola University (a Christian university) where he double majored in Communications with an emphasis on theology, as well as Humanities with an emphasis on philosophy. He is a master story teller who weaves prominent spiritual elements into his work day in and day out. He even made a loose adaptation of CS Lewis’ famous ‘Screwtape Letters’. You may not have heard of it though, since it had an unusual name:

Continue reading →