Is Closing a Church Ever a Good Thing?
Tim Snyder of the Lewis Center Staff writes that closing a church often brings conflict, denial, and shame. But death is a natural passage in…
Browsing: Fruitfulness
Articles
Is Your Congregation a Swamp, a Reservoir, or a Canal?
Is your congregation cut off and inwardly focused? Primarily a storehouse of resources? Or a connector that brings things together? The images of swamp, reservoir,…
Episode 47: “The New Face of Missional Ministry” featuring Tom Berlin
How can a congregation be more effective in developing a missional presence? In this episode we speak with Tom Berlin, lead pastor at Floris United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia, about how being adaptive can help churches live into a more fruitful missional sensibility.
5 Ways to Help Church Staff Succeed
How can your congregation help those in paid staff roles perform most effectively? Ann Michel of the Lewis Center staff outlines five ways to clarify…
3 Strategies for Leading Beyond Your Blind Spots
Lewis Center Director Doug Powe says we all have characteristics that others recognize but we can’t quite see in ourselves. Effective leaders see past these…
Episode 32: “Becoming a Rapidly Growing Church” featuring Matt Miofsky
Why do some congregations grow more quickly than others? In this episode we speak with Matt Miofsky, founding and lead pastor of The Gathering in St. Louis, about the book he wrote with Jason Byassee, 8 Virtues of Rapidly Growing Churches.
Should a Church Close?
Sustainability is increasingly difficult for the ever increasing number of churches worshipping small numbers each week. Lovett Weems captures the dilemma for church leaders and…
Why Attendance and Revenue Figures Don’t Tell the Whole Story
Worship attendance and revenue figures don’t tell the whole story in gauging your church’s effectiveness. Rich Birch suggests some novel indicators that can reveal growth…
Eliminating the Downward Drag of Ministry Clutter
Michael Kurtz explains that churches are quick to add new programs but slow to eliminate older ones, creating ministry clutter and program overload. Regular pruning…
Episode 20: “Ministry Beyond the Wall: Revisiting the Five Fruitful Practices” featuring Robert Schnase
How can congregations more effectively practice fruitful ministry? In this episode Bishop Robert Schnase discusses his revised book, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, with Lewis Center Director F. Douglas Powe.
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…
A Delta Moment in the Church
David McAllister-Wilson, president of Wesley Theological Seminary, posits the metaphor of a delta region to describe the dangerous yet fertile waters the church must navigate…
16 Signs Your Church May Need a Renewed Focus on Disciple Making
Mike Schreiner and Ken Willard say too many churches are driven by structure and programs, not the imperative of making disciples. They outline 16 symptoms…
Closing a Congregation as an Act of Faithfulness
Minnesota Pastor Lee Ann Pomrenke reflects on the painful reality of having to bring a congregation or a ministry to an end. While there is…
So That: Two Powerful Words for Mission Results
Lovett H. Weems, Jr., says that churches often invest a great deal of energy in activities without ever asking how they relate to what God…
Does Your Church Have Barking Dogs?
Lee Kricher, pastor of Amplify Church in Pittsburgh, says every church has things that distract members and visitors from the church’s mission. He writes that…
Do Your Church Events Serve a Healthy Purpose?
Is your church calendar crammed with one event after another? Church consultant Tony Morgan says many congregations just keep scheduling the same events without ever…
Launching Sustainable Ministries
What do you do when someone in your church presents an idea for a new program or ministry? New initiatives can be empowering and energizing.…
Take an Annual Church Health Checkup
At the beginning of every year, many people take time to evaluate their lives and determine new priorities and directions. The same should be true…
The Failure-Tolerant Leader
In tennis, players usually give their maximum effort on the first serve, knowing that if they fault on that one, they will have another opportunity.…
Worship Leadership Requires Planning and Evaluation
What is your current worship planning system? Your first response may be, “We don’t have one.” In reality, every congregation has a planning system, but…
Measuring What Matters: A Conversation about Metrics and Mission
If your life is anything like mine, you may find yourself at the beginning of the year focusing on numbers from the past year. In…
High Yield: Seven Disciplines of the Fruitful Leader
Whether by training or intuition, fruitful leaders develop a set of practices that serve them well and bear much fruit. These practices often become second…
Remember That We Are Working in Sand
Each summer my family spends a week at the beach. And every year my daughters, their friends, and I build a sand castle. We’ve discovered…
Spiritual Lessons from a Vinedresser
Judith Sutera, a Benedictine sister, has spent decades as vinedresser for her monastery’s garden after careful apprenticeship with a mentor wise to the ways of…
Overflow: Increase Worship Attendance & Bear More Fruit
Worship attendance matters. Learn how to improve it, so that your congregation bears more fruit. Our churches exist to glorify God and to share God…
Metrics: A Tool for Learning, Not Judging
The current focus on setting numerical goals for ministry and reporting on the results is not new, though it is now greatly expanded. In the…
The Parable of the Sower and the Experience of Church Growth
The parable of the sower speaks deeply of my experience of church growth and vitality. In the parable, seeds were sown. Good seeds. It is…
The Tussle over Metrics
Church leaders may think that leading in the business world is so much simpler than in the church since there is “one bottom line” and…
Fruitfulness for Others
The fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel contains rich imagery of the vine and the branches, an image that would have been obvious to those who…
