4 Key Practices of Community Engagement
Sam Marullo and Doug Powe, both Wesley Theological Seminary faculty members, have developed a simple model to help congregations engage their communities in meaningful ways.…
Author
Doug Powe
F. Douglas Powe Jr. is the president of Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, OK. Previously, he served as the director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. He is also co-editor with Jessica Anschutz of Healing Fractured Communities (Palmetto, 2024) and coauthor with Lovett H. Weems Jr. of Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation (Fortress, 2022). His previous books include The Adept Church: Navigating Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Abingdon Press, 2020); Not Safe for Church: Ten Commandments for Reaching New Generations; New Wine, New Wineskins: How African American Congregations Can Reach New Generations; Transforming Evangelism: The Wesleyan Way of Sharing Faith; and Transforming Community: The Wesleyan Way to Missional Congregations.
Sam Marullo
Dr. Sam Marullo served as director of Wesley’s Center for the Missional Church. He joined the Wesley faculty in 2010 after serving more than nine years as Chair and Professor of the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University.
3 Leadership Principles from Archbishop Tutu
Lewis Center Director Doug Powe learned through firsthand experience working with Desmond Tutu the key principles of the archbishop’s leadership effectiveness. Powe says Archbishop Tutu was…
4 Ways to Create Accountability for Discipleship
Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says it’s common for many individuals within a congregation to be responsible for discipleship. But often, no one person is…
Church Childcare Programs: Income Generators or Missional Opportunity?
Nursery schools and childcare programs are more to churches than a source of rental income. Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says they offer important missional…
Young Clergy Effectiveness: Good News-Bad News
Data from the Lewis Pastoral Leadership Inventory™ (LPLI) suggest that younger clergy share many of the same strengths as their older colleagues and that they…
Welcoming Change Begins with You
Simple habits of congregational life, such as always sitting in the same pew or greeting the same people after worship, might seem normal and innocuous.…
9 Top Trends Impacting Church Leadership
Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe and Associate Director Ann A. Michel outline some of the major trends evident in their research and interactions with…
6 Keys to Sharing the Gospel in a Pluralistic Culture
Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe, Jr., says evangelistic strategies often fail because they don’t meaningfully and respectfully engage those we are trying to reach.…
Setting the Right Expectations for Volunteers
Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe Jr. says it can be difficult to hold volunteers to high standards of job performance, but clear position descriptions,…
Episode 6: “That’ll Preach” featuring Charley Reeb
How can you connect with more people and engage current parishioners better through preaching? In this Leading Ideas Talks, Lewis Center Director Douglas Powe speaks with Pastor…
Episode 5: “Toward More Synergistic Leadership” featuring Ann Michel
What practices lead to synergistic leadership? Listen as Lewis Center Director Douglas Powe interviews Ann Michel about her book Synergy: A Leadership Guide for Church Staff…
Episode 4: “Becoming an Outward-Focused Church” featuring Junius Dotson
How can we really see and hear the people in front of us? Listen as Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe speaks with thought leader Rev. Junius…
A New Start in Lent
Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe says that congregations, as well as individuals, can make a new start during Lent by giving up some things,…
4 Reasons Visitors Do Not Return
Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe says it’s important not only to attract visitors, but to create a space where they will want to stay.…
Episode 2: “Multicultural Goes beyond Race” featuring Jasmine Smothers
How do you do ministry with people who don’t look like you, sound like you, or think like you? Listen as Lewis Center Director F.…
4 Ways to Engage Busy People
Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe suggests strategies that can make it possible for those with significant time constraints to serve as church leaders —…
Regifting Joy, Hope, Peace, and Love
Lewis Center Director Doug Powe reimagines the common practice of regifting an unwanted gift. He invites us to think of regifting positively — as a…
What are the True Costs of Church Programs?
Are key leaders in your church covering project costs out of their own pockets? Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says owning up to the true…
4 Clues for Inviting Others to Church Effectively
Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says many people just don’t like inviting other people to church, in part because faith is so personal and in…
Missional Church: More than a Catchphrase
What does it really mean to be a missional church? Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says it’s more than a catchphrase for activities aimed at…
Reluctant Leadership
Congregations often struggle to fill vital ministry roles because new leaders are reluctant to step forward. Lewis Center director Doug Powe names three critical factors…
Preparing for the Shift
Incoming Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says that demographic shifts will bring increased diversity to the neighborhoods around most churches in the coming decades. Rather…
Organizing a Missional COMMUNITY
Hal Knight and Doug Powe discuss nine characteristics of transformative Christian communities that allow them to nurture spiritual growth while also remaining open to others…
Transforming Community: The Wesleyan Way to Missional Congregations
Drawing from the strength of their previous book, Transforming Evangelism, Henry Knight and Douglas Powe show us a Wesleyan way to form missional communities and…
Starbucks, Communion, and Race Conversations
Many of us were skeptical and even downright hostile when Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, initiated the idea of “Race Together” to promote conversations…
Not Safe for Church: Ten Commandments for Reaching New Generations
Reaching a new generation requires a new conversation. Congregations say they want to reach new and younger people, many of whom are simply turned off…
When is a Proposed Change a Deal Breaker?
God told Jeremiah “to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” These biblical directions are the definition…
Create New Entry Points
Churches have long assumed that new people would engage their congregations by first attending worship. When they are not growing and attracting new people, people…
Evangelism Today Requires New Wineskins
Churches are struggling with their evangelistic outreach. What worked in the past doesn’t seem to work today. In studying African American churches, I have come…
New Wine, New Wineskins: How African American Congregations Can Reach New Generations
God wants to do a new thing in the African American Church. Author Douglas Powe suggests that the African American church, while once the bedrock of…