One of the most effective things you can possibly do to grow a healthy parish that is easy to get started, not particularly demanding when it comes to maintenance, and, best of all, free: Greeters. Really? Yeah, really. There are lots of reasons people give us for how they found their way to our church, […]
Month: July 2015
This week we finished up our participation in Parish Catalyst, a four-part gathering of parishes all about parish excellence. Conceived and conducted by our good friends Bill Simon and Claire Henning, this first class of 12 parishes (they called us a cohort) was all about gathering dynamic parishes from various parts of North America, and […]
Who’s in your parish? Increasingly, the answer is “None.” And no, “None” is not a number; it’s a religious identity. As many who work for churches know, in 2012, Pew Research Center released their infamous report about the so-called “Nones On the Rise”. Nones are the fastest growing “denomination” in our religious landscape. The latest […]
The Bible is full of the stories of some of the greatest saints and sinners in history. But based on this assessment, we often assume that these characters are either too good or too bad to teach us any really concrete life lessons. This summer, our parish has been surveying “imperfect” characters from the Bible […]
This is typically the time of year when churches experience staff transitions and changes. Here at Nativity we’re not expecting very many changes at all this year, but still I was thinking about it in view of some of our past experiences. Hiring new staff members is one of the most important things I will […]
