articles

David Murrow on creating men-friendly Christmas services: Kyle and Bonnie have been married almost twenty years. Kyle hates going to church. Bonnie loves it. This has caused tension in their marriage, as she subtly prays, preaches and prods Kyle toward religion, and he steadfastly resists. But Kyle “does Bonnie a…

A review of 12,000 court rulings from 2012 reveals the most-common reasons that American churches were taken to court last year. Legal expert Richard Hammar compiled the rulings and analyzed which types are rising and falling for Church Law and Tax, CT’s sister publication. His top five categories: 5) Zoning…

Kristen Gilles encourages us to fix our eyes on Jesus: If we’re honest, we’ll admit that most of us struggle to look up and fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Sometimes our hearts even want what belongs to Jesus. We want our performance to…

Tiffany Deluccia on top problems churches have when trying to build a volunteer force: Tell me if this sounds familiar: Your nursery workers look…irritated. They had a passion for ministering to young parents by providing a safe and nurturing environment for their little ones, but that fire is gone. They’ve…

What do Rick Warren, Katy Perry and Jessica Simpson have in common? They’re all pastors’ kids. A fascinating new study of children of the clergy is making news today, with some remarkable insights for us all. You’ve probably heard of the stereotypical prodigal pastor’s kid who was raised in the…

From Mark Powers, Director, Worship & Music Office SC Baptist Convention: There is good news and bad news for the modern Evangelical church. The bad news is that we are in a rapid statistical decline in almost every category of evangelical life: 80% of our churches have plateaued or declining…

Hoss Hughes on selecting songs and organizing your set list. There’s many creative ways to plan the music for any worship service: drawing songs out of a hat, throwing darts at your pile of sheet music, singing whatever feels good on Sunday morning and hoping the band can keep up.…

Lauren Hunter: What happens when printing costs rise, volunteer help is down, and people look less and less to paper and more to their iPhones? The church bulletin is a staple, tried and true, trusted in and relied on by all. Bored by the announcements? Peruse your well-loved bulletin. Looking…

Michelle Dunn on producing a worship experience: Accepting the position to lead a creative team really took some pondering, prayer and research for me. I am a person who plans, schedules, sticks with a plan and lives within the “box.” I have found that creative people seem to “dance to…

Stephen Newman offers a Biblical example of repetition: For years we have all heard the arguments about choruses and how meaningless it seems to repeat over and over. I came out of a traditional background and could definitely sympathize with the argument. It seemed we felt that repeating a phrase…

Thom Rainer took a poll: When you walk in most church worship services, you are typically handed some printed material. It goes by different names, but the most common and the longest standing name is “bulletin.” There was a time that you could expect consistency in bulletins among many churches.…

Tim Swanson on planning praise sets for the generations: How much time do you spend trying to plan music that speak to the beating heart of your congregation? That’s what I do. When I plan services at Moon Valley Bible Church, I look for music that will connect with people…

Rob Rash on struggling with where you are and where you would like to be: We’ve all been there haven’t we? We model our ministries after the mega churches and worship conferences. In fact, we even long to be in one of ‘those’ positions someday don’t we? We’ll before we…