Map of Evangelical Lutheran Church Adherents as a Percentage of Total Population   8 PRINCIPLES FOR CHURCHES THAT WANT TO GROW by Mark Driscoll When it comes to numbers, churches tend to err in one of two ways: they either discount them as unimportant or they put too much emphasi

For anyone who’s part of a governing board for an organization started a generation or more ago, this is the book for you. The authors give expression to the obvious: organizations which have huge representative boards to please a broad client base with an untenable menu of serv

9 No widow should be placed on the official support list unless she is at least 60 years old, has been the wife of one husband, 10 and is well known for good works — that is, if she has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the saints’ feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted

I was in a room of leaders from around the country that gathered together to design a process to create church planting centers to recruit, develop, and send more church planters. These church planting centers are to be connected, but have decentralized leadership and become church pr

The North American Mission Board (NAMB) has decided to focus on church planting. In 2009, NAMB spent 28% of its budget on church planting. In 2011, 37%; in 2012, plans to spend at least 42%. This has resulted in mass staff restructuring at NAMB and resulted in a 16% decrease on the NA

Had another meeting between leadership of three churches in our church planting network and the state denominational (Baptist Convention of Iowa [BCI]) staff and officers recently. After nearly three hours of discussion, here is my analysis of the issues:

Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand in the presence of kings. He will not stand in the presence of unknown men (Proverbs 22:29). What if you aren’t born with the right skills? Research shows that skills are more developed from practice than from being born with the rig

Leaders Respond Rather than React. Steinke enables readers to quickly get a 50,000-feet view of what happens when challenging events occur in churches. This perspective enables leaders to properly analyze the problem and have confidence and emotional strength to implement solutions. F

Met a new state denominational leader this week.  As we were considering a new partnership between the organization and our church, he said something surprising. He said that the state denominational organization has an identical function as a local church, but the only difference was

This week I was in Atlanta at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) among other church staff from around the country that are focused on church planting. One of our tasks was to develop a list of standards we would propose to insure that church planters conform with NAMB or SBC valu

Last week I attended another one of those collaboration meetings. You know, those meetings where various organizations get together to consider how to work together. I think this is my last one. This time the issue was homelessness, but many collaboration meetings are the same regardl

Veritas Church, Fall 2011 Had another meeting with someone from our denomination’s state convention leadership yesterday. Again the conversation moved past the tremendous fruit and ministry progress that has come from God at Veritas Church in Iowa City. After only twelve months of min