articles

America’s youth are leaving churches in droves. One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a 2012 Public Religion Research Institute poll, and 55 percent of those unaffiliated youth once had a religious identification when they were younger. Yet amidst this exodus, some church…

Bob Kauflin: if this is a trend in congregational song, the word “Whoa!” does come to mind. I’ve been thinking about the use of generic syllables in congregational singing for a while now. It’s not a new phenomenon. I remember singing, “Lai lai lai lai lai, lai lai lai lai…

Thom Rainer: Unhealthy churches have numbers of leaders who don’t practice 1 Corinthians 13. These persons tend to seek their picture of an ideal church rather than loving their current church, her leaders, and her members. They are thus constantly comparing some aspect of the church with some other church…

Chris Huff addresses common mix complaints. One sentence. One sentence should drive music mixing. Close your eyes and listen. What you SEE affects what you THINK you should HEAR. “I can’t hear the keyboard.” “I can’t hear the bass.” “I can’t hear my wife.” Ah, words spoken by the seeing.…

The Atlantic: Where is the line between a pastor promoting his own career and promoting the ministry of his church? By any measure, pastor Mark Driscoll is wildly successful in the contemporary evangelical world. Mars Hill Church, which he co-founded in 1996, in Seattle, now boasts 15 locations from Seattle…

A fascinating explanation of how Mars Hill pushed Driscoll’s book to the top of the NYT Best-Seller list. By tracking the Amazon sales rank of Real Marriage, we can actually see the effects of the bestseller listing. Using archives of Amazon’s Real Marriage page, I tracked the book’s overall Amazon…

Rob Rash encourages us to do more than “put our best foot forward.” We all know the statistics about Easter and Christmas right? People are more open to coming to church on Christmas and Easter than at any other time of the year. We look at these times of worship…

Ever wonder why some Protestant pastors wear robes? Robert Cunningham explains. I spent last weekend with a great group of people interested in joining our church. I gave them an opportunity to ask me any questions they might have about Tates Creek Presbyterian Church, and one person raised their hand…

Matt Mason explores the qualifications of a worship pastor. I realize that many who have the joy of leading in musical worship are not elders in their local church context. That said, the Apostle Paul tells us that it is a noble aspiration to be an elder-pastor (1 Timothy 3:1).…

Hiring is very serious business at Google. For a long time, the search giant was known for lobbing complicated brainteasers at applicants–puzzles such as how many golf balls fit into a school bus?–in the name of hiring the smartest people around. But last year, VP of people operations Laszlo Bock…

There are a lot of different stereotypes about PK’s—some more fair than others—but maybe the safest thing you can say about being a PK is that it sets you up with some expectations. Every Sunday morning, you’re on a stage (sometimes literally), with members of the congregation going through a…

As Obamacare looms, I’ve been reading much about how business are cutting employees from full to part-time in order to avoid the enormous health care costs. Some restaurants are even starting to add an Obamacare fee to your bill. I’ve wondered how this debacle will affect churches. Sure enough, I’m…

Carols Whittaker explains how the full-time worship leader job may be vanishing: I’ve been a “worship leader” for a looooooong time. Started full time circa 1998. Now I’ve been blessed to be able to do many things in the ministry and now worship leading is probably only 1/5th of my…

David Santistevan shares his Worship Leader Checklist: What would you say? Would you have a process in place to help me? If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know we are all about discipleship. But discipleship can be difficult if you don’t know how to disciple. What are…

Tim Adams offers projection advice: More and more churches are moving towards using projected content of some kind in their services and this post is aimed at heading off the purchasing of the wrong projector for your specific application. Below, I’ve assembled my top 5 questions to ask when considering…