Your church is dead if…

Bill Easum (did you know he has a blog?) has written a great post in which he identifies the signs of a spiritually dead church. He says, spiritually dead churches:

Have lost their sense of mission to those who have not heard about Jesus Christ and do not pant after the Great Commission;
Exist primarily to [...]

Working with a church board

Two books that every senior pastor should read and lead his/her board through are:

Go Big – by Bil Cornelius and Bill Easum, and
The Unity Factor (the 2006 edition) by Larry Osborne

These books approach the subject of church leadership differently, but both are well worth the read!
In Go Big, the authors strongly advocate a pastor/staff led [...]

Some Walls Down waddup

Over the last few days there’s been a flurry of activity around Walls Down:

Walls Down now officially has an address – Walls Down Church P.O. Box 498829 Cincinnati, OH 45249-8829

We are setting up our office (in the lower level of my house, for now). This includes setting up a separate phone line, getting a copier [...]

Encouragement

This is what I saw when I walked into the bathroom at IKEA.
At Walls Down Church one of the components of our weekend environments is ENCOURAGEMENT. IKEA did a great job of encouraging and bringing a smile to my face with this sign. You can bet you’ll see something like this in the bathrooms at [...]

Back @ Mountain Lake for a day

Sitting in the Dayton International (ha ha) airport getting ready to fly to Atlanta! Jeff Murphy and I will be at all four Mountain Lake Church services tomorrow. Shawn and the team are going to celebrate what Mountain Lake is doing through their church planter’s residency program. They’re going to give some info about where [...]

I hope I don’t get my way

Sometimes I look at my children and think, “If you knew what I know, you’d quit asking for what you’re asking for!” You know what I mean. They cry when you forbid them to stick sharp metal objects in the electrical outlets. They beg to play with the neighbor kids that you just don’t feel [...]

My backup plan

Last week I changed the lock and tumbler on my van.
Today I changed the carburetor on my lawnmower.
If the whole church planting thing doesn’t work out, I may open a small engine repair shop.
If you listen you can hear the heavenly choir laughing…

To give is better than to receive… or is it?

I have always encouraged people who were in need to receive well, the help of the community (e.g. church, friends, etc.). I believe that life is seasonal. There are seasons when we have plenty and so we should give abundantly. On the other hand, there will be seasons where we have little and so we [...]

What does a church planter do to get ready?

The other day a church planter who’s moving to the area where he will start a new church, asked me what I was going to be doing once we moved to Cincinnati. Here’s the list:

Getting our family settled in
Focusing on personal, spiritual development
Raising funds = lots of meetings
Networking with local leaders (church and otherwise)
Building relationships [...]

The church and homosexuality

My friend Shaun King has written a tremendous post in which he discusses the church and homosexuality.
Go read it here!