If you’re a part of a church staff or other ministry and don’t live under a rock, you’ve likely come face-to-face with having to answer tough questions on morals and doctrine. Answering tough and touchy questions is just part of working for a counter-cultural Church. After decades, even centuries of debate on certain issues, you […]
Category: Communication
What’s more challenging (and annoying) to Christians than outright hostility? Indifference. And that’s exactly the attitude of most of the unchurched people in your community (the hostile one’s are just louder). The truth is, most unchurched people you encounter do not feel morally or even spiritually bankrupt. Actually, they’re spiritually quite “comfortable.” Reaching this group […]
Often the difference between a great experience at Mass, and just a good or not-so-great one, isn’t an innovative tech system or a small army of ministers (though both might be handy), but something more simple and intuitive, like flow. And probably the only thing it will cost you and your team is a little […]
I just got back from another trip visiting our publisher, Ave Maria Press, at Notre Dame. I’m always inspired and grateful after spending time with them. (By the way, allow me to make a plug for their amazing parish resources, check them out @ avemariapress.com) There was a lot on our agenda. We started exploratory […]
If you’ve been keeping up with my Twitter, you might have noticed that our staff at Nativity are filming a TV show. We have partnered up with our amazing friends at CatholicTV to put together 13 episodes of what we are calling The Rebuilt Show. It will air in the Fall and Spring, and you […]
Many will hate to hear it, but one sign of a healthy church is growth in weekend attendance. If people are actively leaving, or not a single new family has joined your parish in some time, then chances are, there are things you could be doing to better attract and serve people through your Sunday […]
I’m posting this week from California at Saddleback Church’s Global PEACE Conference. I’m here with Brian Crook, our Director of Missions at Nativity. It’s been an inspiring and thought-provoking experience. Pastor Rick Warren had the vision of bringing together pastors from countries around the world to share ideas and learn from one another how to […]
This past week, our “Message Team” met for an all day off-site to finalize our plans for our message series for the upcoming year. The message team consists of 7 people on staff who meet each week to help develop and evaluate my weekend messages. A few times a year we take extra time to […]
Our latest message series at Nativity for the Easter season, called “Groundbreaking,” has got me thinking a lot about what the Early Church did and looked like. This message, by the way, is all about how Jesus’ resurrection changed the face of history, and how deeply that resonated with the Apostles and the first Christ […]
This past week, our team of staff who plan our message series’ (what we call the “Message Oval”) set aside a day to draw up a rough sketch of the topics and themes of what I will be preaching about in the upcoming year. Yes, I did say year. We make it a point to […]
