Sam Rainer's Blog, page 7

Your Church Is Probably Not Paying Your Pastor Enough

Most pastors do not take a vow of poverty when called into the ministry. They deserve a fair wage for their work like everyone else. Moreover, almost every pastor is motivated by factors other than money. I don’t hear many stories from pastors beginning with, “I decided to go into ministry because of the money.”

Likely, your church is not paying your pastor enough. What gives?

First, I want to offer three points of clarification.

My church is generous, and I’m content with my pay. West Braden...

What Pastors Actually Think About While They Preach

People often apologize to me for something that happened in a church service. I’ve heard lots of great apologies.

“I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“I’m sorry I had to rush out.”

“I’m sorry my kid lit his hair on fire.”

I love church—both the people of God and the worship services. I love the oddities that can happen during a church service. I’ve had fire alarms go off during a Father’s Day sermon (thanks to an intern who attempted to make scones in the kitchen). At the church I pastored in Indiana, th...

Why Many Churches Will See Giving Go Down in 2024 (Plus Practical Tactics for Resilient Church Budgeting Amid Declining Giving)

Many church experts (us included!) predicted a dip in church giving when the pandemic hit in 2020. The drop never came. Three significant reasons stand out why church giving remained stable through the pandemic. 

God’s people rallied and supported their churches. While many churches lost people on the periphery, the core remained strong and continued giving. Both governments in the United States and Canada inserted a lot of liquidity into the markets. Cash from the government hit bank accou...

Christmas Eve Is a Sunday This Year (The Big Opportunity)

The holiday season is demanding. Pastors and church leaders must move from one event to the next in rapid-fire succession. The whirlwind lasts from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. Most pastors get a small break between Christmas and the New Year, and then it’s time to launch again. Ministry is a grind. The deadlines never end, and Christmas is the busiest and most chaotic season.

Christmas Eve lands on a Sunday this year. I understand the temptation to scale back. We briefly discussed this option...

The Top Ten Misaligned Priorities in Struggling Churches

Churches decline for two main reasons—both having to do with a shift in priorities. First, they lose passion for the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. Second, as a result, they no longer give God glory. When a church no longer pushes outward with the gospel, the people will no longer look upward to God’s glory. A church lacking both an outward and upward perspective will inevitably move in the other two directions: inward and downward. Inward churches always decline.

Misaligned priorit...

Seven Tips to Make Sermon Points More Memorable

My wife recently found a box of old church bulletins with notes from my previous sermons. She is a prodigious note-taker. These old bulletins contained thousands of sermon points. How many of them did she remember? I didn’t ask. 

Only a few congregants will remember specific points I make in a sermon several years afterward. This reality does not discourage me. Spiritual growth builds over time and works like exercise. You will not likely remember every specific workout, but you will build stren...

Why Your Church Needs More (Often) Announcements in Worship

Most of us have entered the twilight zone of worship announcements at some point. A person approaches you with awkward determination three minutes before the start of a worship service. A piece of paper unfolds multiple times.

If there was a way to collect all these scraps of paper, we pastors could create an epic coffee table book of some of the oddest things people want to share with a congregation.

In a previous church, I had to kill the death announcements. Historically, the church began wor...

The One Thing that Solves Most Church Problems (Only 1% of Churches Actually Do This)

Church health will not improve until ongoing evangelism returns.

A recent Church Answers poll found that only 1% of churches have an ongoing evangelism effort. This finding corroborated a more extensive longitudinal study we’ve been conducting since 1996, in which the lowest church health score across denominations is in the category of evangelism.

The trend is alarming, and it is getting worse. We are seeing it across denominational lines and in non-denominational churches.

The figure below is ...

Dispelling Four Common (and Unhelpful) Myths about Neighborhood Churches

“There’s a church on every corner in that community!”

I’ve heard this comment many times over the years. In most cases, the tone indicates a level of disdain. It’s understandable. Church buildings seem to be everywhere, while God’s mission seems to be nowhere. But I don’t believe we need to give up on these churches. God hasn’t.

When I see a church on three acres buried in a dense neighborhood, I don’t think “landlocked and limited potential.” I see opportunity. Who else is better situated to re...

How to Recover from a Toxic Church and Bounce Back Even Better

When the church causes hurt, it pollutes God’s calling and creates a toxicity that works against the gospel.

The goal is to minimize church hurt and maximize church unity. Here is reality. Something will happen in almost every church because ministry includes people. In some cases, the pastor is the cause of the hurt. In other cases, the people of the church hurt the pastor. Pastors can be responsible for church hurt, but this article focuses on how pastors should respond when experiencing a tox...