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.
My definition of Christian education is (and has been for over thirty years): Information needed for formation that leads to transformation. Christian education was a central focus of the research I did on congregational vitality (1999-2006) and I found quite a bit of evidence that confirmed the value of such […]
Yes, I know “thrival” isn’t a word, but it should be. We spend so much time in the church talking about ‘survivial’ and ‘revival’ that we forget to talk about what it would look like if we truly thrived. Last year, “…for the transformation of the world” got officially added […]
Writers and researchers who look at “the state of the church” often fall into the erroneous and unhelpful fallacy of reducing our faith to the simplistic dualism of “churched” and “unchurched.” This ignores the fact that many church members are Christian in name only, while a large and growing segment […]
Among my greatest disappointments, not being able to follow-through on the UM Worship Patterns project is near the top. I have not engaged in a more interesting — and potentially helpful — project in all my time in research. This article is a companion to Theology of Worship? and Preacher […]
I’m no Fox News, but I do attempt to be fair and balanced. This past week I struck a chord with a significant number of people with my Igniting Misery and Taking It All Too Seriously posts. One subtext of both posts is that some of our decision-makers in the […]
Answers are over-rated. Good questions beat right answers every time. The reason? Rarely in real life is there ever a single “right” answer. There are good answers. There are workable answers. There are reasonable answers. And in most cases there are multiple answers. Answers are easy, but asking the right […]
This afternoon (May 5) I received an email that really got my gears grinding. It was a personal note from someone of position and influence in The United Methodist Church. I respect the opinion. But three things were said in the missive that I can’t let go of. And so […]
Somehow (it’s not hard to understand…) I have developed the reputation of actively disliking Igniting Ministry/ReThink Church/”Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.” This isn’t actually true, but perception shapes reality. I am critical of our marketing work/branding efforts for a wide variety of reasons, but I have never said Igniting […]
Like everything else in popular media, sensation sells when it comes to religion in the United States. And also like the popular media, the product shared with the public is shaped to “make news.” Good thing? Bad thing? Doesn’t really matter. What matters is, how do we cut through all […]
One day last month, I sat down and sifted through a mounting stack of articles on my desk. I found a number of articles on ‘mega-churches’ all published within a few days of each other. What was most striking was that they were saying incredibly different things. USA Today talked […]
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