Often, parish leaders have a major weakness when it comes to keeping their church campus and space attractive for guests. It’s the same problem you have with your house: when you spend so much time in a place, you become blind to its flaws and imperfections. You stop noticing: the dead shrubs along the […]
Category: Evangelization
Recently, the Pew Research Center released an update to an ongoing study of religious identification and engagement among Americans. The results should sound familiar at this point: an increase in the number of people identifying as unaffiliated with any particular religion, increasingly infrequent church attendance, and declining religiosity among younger generations. Data like this should […]
Every year, my friend Pastor Rick Warren leads a fantastic conference at Saddleback Church on building healthy, purpose-driven churches. I had the privilege of being a part of this year’s conference when Rick asked me to speak at the final session on “Leading Your Church Through Change.” Tom, my associate, and I first came to […]
We are in the third week of our Lenten message series asking the basic question “Why?” “Why am I doing this?” “What am I here for?” Sometimes it can happen at a party when we don’t know many people or feel out of place, especially if you are an introvert like me. Or we step […]
In many countries the period before Lent is called “Carnival,” originally a Latin phrase meaning literally “farewell to meat.” The phrase was a reference to the rather rigorous approach to the whole extended season of Lent observed by the faithful and the devout in many places. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and extends until the […]
We are about to launch a very interesting project in the life of the parish. We’re going to complete the balcony we left unfinished when we opened our new church last year. Because of the success of our Vision Campaign we were able to complete some of the more costly items involved in a balcony […]
We are kicking off a brief three-week series all about fishing. And as we begin I should acknowledge, for purposes of transparency, I have never been fishing in my life. And I have absolutely no interest in ever giving it a try. So it might seem like a funny topic to propose. But, when Jesus […]
Last week my pastor, Father Michael White, posted a blog which underscored the value we place on programs for infants and toddlers that parents can use while they’re attending Mass. Within hours his Twitter account lit up with dozens of responses, mostly negative. Fr. Michael acknowledges that he could have done a better job of […]
This Sunday brings one of my favorite readings from one of my favorite books of the Bible. We are looking at a passage from Nehemiah, which is all about rebuilding. Nehemiah gets permission from the king of Persia to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls around the city, which were broken and a […]
Recently we had a very extended and animated discussion in our Strategic Leadership Team. And what sparked the debate? Our online campus, specifically: live streaming Sunday Masses “on demand” services and programming during the week Basically the debate came down to one that, I suspect, is happening in many settings these days. Is the online […]
