Notable Voices and the Week in Review: July 1, 2017
Five Terrible Reasons to Enter Vocational Ministry
She Reads Truth with Raechel Myers and Amanda Bible Williams – Rainer on Leadership #340
Dispelling the 80 Percent Myth of Declining Churches
Six Items to Include in Your Guest Welcome Packet
13 Signs of Pastor Fatigue – Rainer on Leadership #341
Five Reasons Lead Pastors Should Be Involved with VBS — Sam Rainer
If you’re a lead pastor, it’s tempting to take off the week because you’re not really needed to lead VBS. Many churches have longstanding volunteers and leaders who basically run with VBS every year. But the week of VBS is not the time to take a vacation. When your congregation is all-hands-on-deck, then you need to be there. The lead pastor should be an active and visible part of VBS. Here’s why.
Helpful Practices for Pastoral Revitalization — Marty Duren
Personal/pastoral revitalization concerns the whole being, not only the body or only the emotions. Observing these practices on an ongoing basis will help keep us on a path of physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
How to Encourage Your Pastor — David McLemore
Pastoring a church is not an easy job. Here are 10 ways you can encourage your pastor (or pastors).
10 Ways to Create an Unhealthy Team Environment — Ron Edmondson
Seriously, I realize no one intentionally sets out for unhealthiness, but I’ve seen it so many times. There are things which injure the health of a team. Perhaps understanding how it develops can help, because just as with a healthy team environment, creating an unhealthy team environment doesn’t happen without intentionality. We have to work at it.
3 Phrases Smart People Should Stop Saying — Eric Geiger
I have noticed some recurring phrases that make the intelligent people seem less so, that blunt the impact of their words and distract from the message. After first hearing them on podcasts, they are now showing up in regular life as well. Maybe I need to take a break from podcasts and go old school and listen to music again, but here are three phrases smart people should stop saying:
Curing the Sickness That’s Killing The Church — Sean Palmer
There is a corrosive contagion killing the American church. Quite simply, it’s consumerism, the desire to be served. Americans exist in a culture built on productivity, buying, and selling. We don’t need to deconstruct the nature, causes, positives, and negatives of a consumeristic culture, but the by-product of that culture is a Christianity that has almost wholly imported consumeristic reflexes. This seizure of Christian imagination is the leading edge of the lack of meaningful spiritual formation in most churches. I don’t know all the answers, but I want to highlight a few manifestations of the virus and invite you to offer gospel-shaped remedies to eradicate the contagion.
