I always thought spiritual growth was like a buffet. You step up to the table and choose whatever looks good to you. You sample. You go back for seconds. And in the end, you’re done. As a church leader using the cafeteria approach, I figured that if I could set out a variety of foods, then people could choose for […]
Develop Good Systems
How to Unlock your Church’s Giving Potential
You may smirk at my simple, and profound, paradox of church giving: The vast majority of people want to give. They just don’t. And there are lots of reasons why. Some don’t give because they don’t know that they should. Others don’t give because they’ve never been taught what the Bible says. Many make assumptions about how a […]
7 Steps to the Church of your Dreams
Do you have pipe dreams for your church? Visions of what you would like to see, but maybe won’t. My pipe dream would be to see our church so well organized that everyone knows exactly what to do. Our greeters would welcome people just right every time. The nursery workers would have mad baby skills. The […]
Where Do you Start if you Want to Get your Church Unstuck?
I hate it when a church gets stuck. Especially if that church is mine. In 2001, New Song moved from a leased facility with a 200 seat auditorium to our own facility with a 600 seat auditorium. Everything increased, except our capacity to care. Attendance rocketed from 500 to 1,100 in one month. Then we […]
What Good Systems Do for your Church and How to Create Them
Three times in New Song’s history I’ve been depressed or discouraged over the church’s lack of growth. During our early years, we plateaued at about 230. It happened again at around 400. Then we bounced between 750 and 950 for several years. Every time this happened I would pray, asking the Lord what we needed […]