L+L September 2015: Whole Church
GC Talk After the Sunday service yesterday at my home church, someone asked me for a report on General Conference 2015. Although I’m a trained reporter, I struggled to respond quickly and articulately....
View ArticleSocial Influence in a Rapidly Changing World
The Bible includes a story of a young man with remarkable social influence: Joseph, who saved a region of the world from a savage, seven-year famine. The story starts off as an account of Joseph’s...
View ArticleStop Preaching
I know why you won’t love this article. Because it doesn’t smell like anything. It’s propositional: It tries to convince your mind, it lines up a series of arguments, and it trusts you’re a logical...
View ArticleSix Steps for Church Social Media
Your local church has a wide array of social media options. Figuring out how to best involve your church is not as complicated as it may seem. 1. Know what is available. On Facebook, your church should...
View ArticleFirst-Century Content/21st-Century Media
I had my own radio station, WRAD, when I was a kid. My broadcast equipment included a microphone, mixer and tape deck. By age 10, I sent a cassette several states away to Grandma, my No. 1 fan and...
View ArticleL+L October 2015: #Whole
Hashtags and Wholeness This issue’s title originated during a phone conversation that a colleague and I had with a bishop of the Free Methodist Church, which has the vision “to bring wholeness to the...
View ArticleChurch Growth Is Anything but a Numbers Game
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words “church growth”? For many people, church growth is all about the numbers. They want to know how many new people are coming through...
View ArticleA Church Ripe for the Picking
Looking at the sphere of the Christian church two extreme categories emerge. These two categories stand as polar opposites, each at the other end of the spectrum and neither fulfilling the biblical...
View ArticleWhat Does Your Tattoo Mean?
Many years ago, we had a friend whose 18-year-old daughter was going to get a tattoo. She was horrified and was sharing with a few of us at church how embarrassed she felt. An 85-year-old woman heard...
View ArticleInvitation Accepted
It is always wonderful to be invited. Whether or not we want to attend an event is secondary, but no one wants to be left out. I remember the first invitation I received to a national event for...
View Article8 Steps to Accomplish Just About Anything in 2016
It all started for me while I was climbing a mountain in Russia at 16,000 feet in a blizzard. I could have written it off to oxygen deprivation, but something within me said it was more. On that...
View ArticleSated With Food, Jaded With Memories, Peering Toward August
Mashed potatoes light up the pleasure circuits of my brain the same way a glazed doughnut does. At our house, we still mash them — potatoes that is — the old-fashioned way with that squiggle of wire...
View ArticleTransforming the Church Through Conflict
Over the past 15 years, I have served as a spiritual care coordinator, a pastor and a seminary professor. In all of these settings, I have discovered again and again that the most challenging moments...
View ArticleJust “Knock It Off!”
The Apostle Paul exhorts the Corinthians on the matter of unity. “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no...
View ArticleHow’s Your Buffer?
Nearly a decade ago, I sat in a Spring Arbor University classroom waiting for my professor to arrive for class. During the wait, I used my computer to watch one of my favorite television shows,...
View ArticleCreation Celebration 2016
Since the beginning of human history, people have been creating in groups — first in families and then in villages and societies. One of my favorite things to do is to watch creativity unfold [in...
View ArticleSeasoned Disagreement
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Colossians 4:6). These words come from a person who knew how to love on people and how...
View ArticleFour Factors for Church Conversations
“I’d like to share some concerns with you.” “Would you mind if we sat down and talked?” “Can I speak with you about something that happened (or something that you said the other day)?” We’ve all said...
View ArticleWisdom and Vulnerability
Martin Luther King Jr. once stated, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” King understood the importance of difficult conversations. He believed all people...
View ArticleEngaging Difficult Conversations
“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people … religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin,” said Linus in a 1961 “Peanuts” comic strip and a 1966 cartoon. With the exception of the...
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