Love, Growth, Foundation

I love this quote from Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb: “Most startups are focused on growing faster. That alone would not make us a great company. We realized we had to focus on three things: love, growth, and foundation.” Ironic how perfectly it applies to churches. Most church plants are focused on growing faster. They…

Read More

What Should We Count?

Churches count their “attendance” each week. (Some don’t count very accurately, willing to count people – band, choir, staff, children’s volunteers, etc. – multiple times, but that’s a point for another day.) They count the amount of people from their city who show up at their church each week. But I’d like to propose counting…

Read More

Not For Everyone

Yesterday a lady came into Verve for the first time. She walked in looking disgruntled. (Which is, actually, not that easy to do.) She found someone to complain to, and started complaining. “The music in the lobby is too loud. You can’t even have a conversation. This isn’t the way church is supposed to be.”…

Read More

Preaching To The Unchurched

The Vault Conference started yesterday.  Here’s a brief excerpt from my talk today on “Preaching To The Unchurched” … Let me make sure you realize this: If you get unchurched people sitting in your auditorium, and you walk up to preach, they are not thinking, “Oh, good, here’s the dispenser of Bible truth!”  They’re not…

Read More