Using our gifts to serve God, not ourselves

Did God give us the church as a place to use our gifts? Or did he give us gifts so we could serve the church? The difference might seem subtle, but the way you answer has a profound impact on how you view yourself, your church, and your volunteers.

A Tale of Two Gospels: Which one do you believe in and share?

Which “gospel” do you believe in?
Your answer to that question will have a direct bearing on what you think about church discipline. Therefore, it’s worth making sure we are talking about the same gospel before we talk about anything else.

Here are two subtly different versions of the gospel. The first one will probably shut down any talk about church discipline. The second one will start the conversation.

12 Common Mistakes in Ministry Leadership

I had the occasion over a couple months to ask some senior people in ministry the same question. Some were long retired. Others had 30, 40 even 50 years experience, but are still serving today. All would be considered to have finished – or be finishing – well.

Here was the primary question: Looking back, what were some of the biggest mistakes you made in ministry? If you had it to do over – or you were advising me and others – what advice would you give?

How to multiply leaders

We know we need to multiply groups if we’re going to reach new people.  The most common objection I hear to creating new groups is, “We don’t have enough leaders.”  So how do we multiply leaders?

The book Ten Best Practices to Make Your Sunday School Work (Ken Hemphill and Bill Taylor) contains some great ideas about developing an intentional process to continually multiply leaders.  Here are three of those ideas: