Tag: church

How to Make Church Announcements Better

Announcements are legendary in churches.  You know the period of time where a man gets up and tries to share some important news for the whole church, which seems easy enough, but it is known for all types of mistakes.  The number one complaint about announcements  is that they take too long.  A second notorious …

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Six Challenges Church Leaders Face

Ministers and church leaders along with their families face some unique challenges.  Here are six challenges they face and the success of their ministry is often determined with how they handle these. The fish bowl complex.  Leaders must not only face the normal trials of life, but must do it as the church looks on.  Many …

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Assume Sincerity

I attended the Better Conference back in September.  There was a round table discussion with five of our most respected and successful preachers.  All were veterans with ministry experience of 40-60 years.  They were discussing various ministry topics when a question was asked about how to handle those of other Christian faiths. One brother said …

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Feeding the Problems and Starving the Star Performers in the Church

Mark Sanborn wrote about the extraordinary service of Fred the Postman in his best-selling book The Fred Factor in 2004.  The book tells about Fred’s generosity and commitment to excellence in the midst of normalcy.  The book encourages people to be a Fred.  The real Fred Shea gained some recognition from the book, but has …

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Group-Tipping Our Christian Duty

I don’t think anyone likes it, except the waiters, when restrauants add a mandatory percentage of tip when you are dining as a big group.  Likely the main reason for such is they have learned when people eat in big groups it requires more work from the servers and often people don’t tip like they …

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Drawing Faith Lines: A Lesson from Patent Shoes

We are called to live out an ancient faith in this modern world.  This means we often have to use biblical principles to make judgments about what we should and should not do in this world.  Christians often disagree on these judgements and controversy seems to surround these topics. We were discussing this idea in ladies’ …

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Family Vacation and Church Retreat Rolled into One

I had always thought about family vacations and church retreats being separate things.  A church retreat is usually just for a weekend get away.  It is intense and involves people spending most all of their time with church family.  It is typically within driving distance and often at some type of a camp or park. …

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Is Your Church Prepared to Save Someone’s Life?

Churches are in the saving business!  Of course, I am speaking about saving people’s souls through the gospel of Jesus Christ. But what about saving someone’s physical life?  We were faced with that task on a Wednesday night at 7 Oaks Church of Christ recently. Our normal Bible study portion had concluded and we were moving …

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A Church’s First Year at Lads-to-Leaders Convention

We just got back from our congregations first year to attend the Lads-to-Leaders Convention.  I know your congregation may be considering this ministry.  I wanted to write about our experience and how we went about it in the hope of helping you as a first-timer as well.  I am going to use a bullet list …

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“You Are the Trophy”

Austin, my 11 year old son, was disappointed at not placing in his speech competition at Lads-to-Leaders.  He rocked his speech!  He delivered it the best he had ever done.  He felt really good about it.  He enjoyed the lesson, put his heart out there, and felt like he would get a trophy. He understood …

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