I am the lead pastor at People's United Methodist Church in the Wisconsin Conference of The United Methodist Church, husband of my beautiful wife, Barbara, dad to my fantastic son, Josh and his wife Caroline, step-dad to my phenomenal son, Greg, his wife Hannah and our fabulous/glorious/perfect granddaughter Evie, author of seventeen books on spirituality, stewardship, congregational development, research, and spiritual gifts discovery, and an advocate for a more loving, inclusive church for the 21st century and beyond.
A thought exercise: what would happen to The United Methodist Church in these United States if when we woke up tomorrow morning, all our buildings and property were gone? How many of our congregations would carry on with hardly a disruption? How many “members” would we lose to churches with […]
We live in a Wiki world. A collaborative, evolving, and highly interactive way of creating and recreating reality. Facts and opinions merge to create a new kind of “flexible” truth. Wikipedia has transformed the way we think about information and the authority of the written word. Knowledge is built over […]
“You’re against church growth, aren’t you?” asked a new, young pastor. I looked at him for a moment, pausing to reflect on the fact that I am often my own worst enemy. I can fully understand how someone who reads my writing — books and blogs — might get the […]
In recent months I have visited a number of churches where leaders have apologetically said to me, “Our numbers are down. We always lose them through the summer.” Worship attendance is currently the primary metric for a church’s effectiveness — which is ironic because worship attendance has nothing to do […]
Okay, I know I am sounding like a broken record, but no other subject has garnered the kind of response this one has. The subject of truth-telling in leadership is volatile. As I have said before, what is most amazing to me is how strongly some pastors and lay people […]
When did “evangelism” become “marketing?” At what point did the church rise up and say, “You know? Evangelism doesn’t have to be personal. We can phone (email, billboard, television, webcast) it in!” The shift from relational evangelism to representational evangelism is almost complete in some areas. At the School of […]
I listened to a sermon on restorative justice — one of my passions. I am generally an easy audience for justice messages, but this particular one kept jarring me. The preacher hammered on the need for us to be in ministry to both victims and victimizers, to the incarcerated, to […]
I wrote two posts last week about the importance for pastors to tell the truth, and it generated a suprising amount of debate — both on the side of saying that there is never a good reason to lie as well as those defending the need for strategic fabrication and […]
I was speaking with a young person the other day, and the issue of healthcare came up. She rolled her eyes, blew out her lips, and said, “Why are we wasting so much time talking about healthcare? Why don’t we do something really important?” My response was, “What’s more important […]
Deeply etched in an archway in Myrtos-Pyrgos is the Minoan phrase, “Listen to teach, speak to learn.” This counterintuitive instruction echoes through the ages to challenge practices in contemporary Christian education and faith formation. In a culture where speech is valued over listening and where teachers are more highly revered […]
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