August 13, 2013 A guest post by Jeff Stiggins A vital congregation makes present and impactful the incarnational ministry of Jesus in a particular place. Vital congregations are homegrown. They are rooted in and reflect the culture and people in their communities. Therefore, there are no vanilla, one-size-fits-all vital congregations. Everyone is tailor-made for their particular location. What blooms like [...]
August 6, 2013 Guest post by Jeff Stiggins It isn’t my church or your church or even our church. The church belongs to Jesus. It’s easy to forget that the church is a franchise. We don’t get to decide what the church is about. The mission is set. Still we vote on what we want as if our preferences [...]
July 31, 2013 Guest post by Jeff Stiggins There is lots of talk these days in United Methodist circles about increasing the number of vital congregations. Okay, what’s a “vital congregation?” If one ran through the room right now, how would you recognize it? In this blog series, I’d like to offer a definition of a “vital congregation.” The [...]
May 5, 2013 By Phil Maynard “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first, must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew [...]
April 28, 2013 By Phil Maynard “We are not meant to remain as children…but we are meant to speak the truth in love, and to grow up in every way in Christ, the head.” (Ephesians 4:14, JB Phillips) There is a deep-seated expectation in the contemporary church that it is the responsibility of the church, [...]
April 21, 2013 By Phil Maynard I come from a Wesleyan tradition so I confess that personal accountability is wired into my being. Having said that, it is also clear across denominational lines and theological perspectives that movement toward maturity in the Christian journey requires a level of accountability. The genius of Wesley’s discipling process [...]
April 11, 2013 By Phil Maynard 5 Ways to Get People into the Word (the most critical element of spiritual growth) Reflection on scripture is the vanilla ice cream of spiritual growth. It is the stuff that all the other spiritual growth catalysts are built upon. Engaging scripture personally and regularly is critical for spiritual [...]
February 20, 2013 By Phil Maynard Some version of the statement “you can’t keep doing things the same way you have been and expect to get different results” (notice how tactful I was here!) seems to be worth pondering by churches Ffrom a wide variety of denominational tribes. We all know it just doesn’t work. [...]
February 20, 2013 By Phil Maynard Chip and Dan Heath, in this very excellent book about leading change, provide amazing insights into how to connect with both our rational and emotional processes to accomplish change. In the first part of the book, the authors introduce the psychology of change using an analogy developed by psychologist [...]
February 20, 2013 By Phil Maynard I think one of the most common misunderstandings about leadership in the church is that the primary job of the leader is to lead (defined as be in charge, make all the decisions, tell people what to do, think up every new ministry focus etc.) This is not what [...]