A leading casualty of the pandemic has been the weakening of communal glue. An important priority for renewal leaders is reinvesting in life-together. In early pandemic research, Barna has noted that 1 in 3 practicing …
Navigating Accelerated Changes
Recently, I heard someone say, “The pandemic hasn’t changed history, its accelerated history.” Their observation was about society in general, but it’s also true for the church. The change churches are experiencing is something we …
How To Renew an Aging Congregation
As life with COVID-19 continues, churches are returning to earlier conversations about renewal. One challenge many of these congregations face is that they have a majority of chronologically aging members. Renewing an aging congregation has …
We are all restarts now
“Well it’s official,” said my executive assistant this past week, “we are all restarts now.” She’s right, nearly every church is now a restart. A typical church restart is a congregation that closes for several …
Faith formation restart
Churches gathering for in-person worship are seeing return rates of 30-40%, notes Ken Braddy of Lifeway Christian Resources. In my observation, there are three reasons for lagging participation: on-going health concerns, new on-line worship practices, …
Stepping stones to a God-preferred future
Pre-COVID the typical church renewal process helped congregations identify a 5-10 year God-given vision for a God-preferred future. With that vision in hand, incremental steps were developed to move from here to there. That approach …
Characteristics of Missional Leaders
There are seasons when the hope of our future depends on the quality of our leaders. We are living in one of those seasons. The importance of competent leadership in today’s homes, communities, nations and …
Putting ‘local’ in the local chuch
“No one should be able to out-local the local church” writes Carey Nieuwhof in the Outreach Magazine article “7 New Disruptive Trends That Will Shape the Future of the Church.” One of those disruptive trends …
Questions for the land inbetween
Together we are sojourning through a “land between.” It’s a land between pre- and post-COVID 19. The sojourn will, likely, last another 6-12 months. An interesting dynamic of journeying through this land between is that …
Renewal leaders and the need for greater agility
A lot has changed with respect to ministry planning in the past few months. A year ago, a congregation’s ministry horizon was, generally speaking, 3-5 years into the future. Major decisions demanded attention but they …
