As your church settles down from Christmas celebrations, things are no doubt getting into full swing for the person managing all your church’s accounting. If that person is you, you likely still have several time-sensitive tasks on your horizon that need to get finished by January 31. Putting a good system in place can help keep you on track — and that’s what we’ve outlined for you below.
Read More >
At Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, TN, hope is not a strategy. Rather, when disaster strikes — as it has, twice — the church has been able to sustain its rapid growth and expansion with preparation and perseverance.
Read More >
You probably noticed that this new series of articles has been retitled to Never Again: Beyond Insurance. But, how does a church organization get “beyond insurance” — and should it even try?
Read More >A Virginia church is at the center of every congregation’s worst nightmare: One of its former volunteers is accused of sexually abusing several children he met through the church.
The worst part is that these newest charges come six years after similar allegations plagued the man and the church.
Once a clean record, not always a clean a record.
Read More >
In my ministry in visiting, encouraging and partnering with literally hundreds of churches, there are five essential aspects of church leadership that I am committed to never forget. Here they are in a condensed form. To make it interesting, the most important is actually the last one on the list.
Read More >
Calm is the “unicorn” of virtues in a world gone mad.
all-is-calmSomewhere along the line, it became cool to be loud and bitter.
It became an expectation that, for us to change the world (our job, apparently), we had to become social activists. Not the good kind — the Rosa Parks type of social activist. I mean the other kind. The abrasive, snarky, shaming, Jesus-juking, share-button-hitting, constantly outraged kind of social activists.
Read More >
With more than 3 billion people using the Internet by 2015, the trend of people relying on the Internet to connect with each other is showing no signs of slowing down — and that’s just fine with Jimmie Davidson.
Read More >What is your favorite type of hat?
Mine is, by far, baseball caps. I have a whole wall and more in my garage of probably 60 to 70 baseball caps. Right now, I’m wearing my Chicago Cubs hat with a Santa cap on the historic Cubs “C” — love it!
Whether or not we love to wear hats on our head, we all wear them in life. I submit to you that all of us should have no more than two hats of commitment at any one time in the major areas of our lives.
Read More >Good leaders are both analysts and catalysts. Leaders must accurately describe reality. Leaders must create for a better future. An analyst has a proper understanding of present reality. A catalyst knows what to create for a better future. The analyst helps followers understand the present. The catalyst inspires followers to move towards the future.
Read More >I’m in the process right now of setting up the annual learning trip for our church’s leadership team. We plop down in a city for a few days and discuss the best practices of several churches.
This year, I had two churches that I had relationships with and lined them up right away. However, as I’ve been looking for a third church to meet with, I have run into three churches in a row that have had a senior leader resign in recent years due to a moral failure — again, all in one city!
Leaders blow it sometimes, don’t we?
Read More >