Leveraging Your Church’s Demographics
All those numbers. All those statistics. Regardless of where you get your ministry area’s demographics, there’s a lot of important information there beyond just the population, age, and ethnicity. In this episode, Mary Frances, noted church consultant and demographer, shares Read more…
Make the Most of Networking
If you’re serious about growing your church, then networking in your community (and online) is one of the keys. But where do you network and how do you network is a mystery to too many church leaders. In this episode, Read more…
Post-Pandemic Church Growth
Churches have been reopening now for many months, mostly to great disappointment. So many church members and pastors believed that there would be a flood of relieved church members and guests rushing back to fellowship, worship, and in-house worship only Read more…
Vision First
Too often, our churches appear to be on autopilot – we do what we do because it’s what we do and pretty much all we’ve ever done. Worship looks like worship. Sunday school looks like Sunday school. The bulletin looks Read more…
The Most Important Room: June 24
When it comes to visitors, the sanctuary is not the most important room in the building. Sure, they might be impressed with the beautiful stained glass windows, but it’s not the first space that they’ll talk about when they get Read more…
Building Connections: On and Off Line
Whether you’re doing in-person worship, on-line worship, or a hybrid, the reality is that if you’re not making good connections with your members, your guests, and your visitors, then you’re dead in the water. In today’s world, making connections is Read more…
The Fine Art of Communicating
Believe it or not, Christians aren’t well known for being great communicators. In fact, we have a fairly wide reputation as being argumentative, closed minded, and biased. In this episode, Drs. Kris and Bill have a conversation (?) a discussion Read more…
Invite: The Nuts and Bolts
The first process for growing your church is to effectively invite people who are outside of the church to come and check you out. Whether you’re inviting to worship online, worship in person, a Sunday school class, or a Friday Read more…
Teaching Prayer
Where did you learn how to pray? If you’re like most of us, you learned by listening to others who were praying. If you were raised in church, the primary example was the pastor and the pastoral prayer. The problem Read more…
Measuring Maturity
When your nominating team meets, are they looking for warm bodies to fill positions, or are they looking for mature disciples with passion? We’ll get to the passion part in another episode, but how can you tell whether or not Read more…
The 5 Faces of Jesus
It’s a loaded question, as in, it’s a GREAT question for sharing why you’re a Jesus followers: “Why do you go to church?” But the response is too often a mumbled conversation about how wonderful the people are or how Read more…
The Fine Art of Communicating
Believe it or not, Christians aren’t well known for being great communicators. In fact, we have a fairly wide reputation as being argumentative, closed minded, and biased. In this episode, Drs. Kris and Bill have a conversation (?) a discussion Read more…
Make the Most of Meetings
Love ’em or hate ’em, meetings are a part of the church. However, have you been noticing meeting attendance waning? There may be a good reason why your members – and even your staff – are avoiding your meetings. In this Read more…
Make the Most of Networking
If you’re serious about growing your church, then networking in your community (and online) is one of the keys. But where do you network and how do you network is a mystery to too many church leaders. In this episode, Read more…
Ministry – Too Important for Volunteers
Everything your church does has eternal consequences. Lives and souls and families and eternities hang in the balance. With that in mind, do your really think that a cadre of mere volunteers have the commitment level and the expertise to Read more…
Role of the Lead Pastor: Priorities
Whether you’re a solo pastor, or a pastor with serious staff, where you choose to invest your time is critical. In this episode Dr. Bill sits down with Paul Borden, author of How to Make or Break Your Church in Read more…
What To Do When Your Church Is In Debt: July 01
Church debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but too many churches have found that the debt load they could afford ten years ago is now a millstone around their necks. Budgets are in the red. Staff is being cut. And Read more…
Ministry – Too Important for Volunteers
Everything your church does has eternal consequences. Lives and souls and families and eternities hang in the balance. With that in mind, do your really think that a cadre of mere volunteers have the commitment level and the expertise to Read more…
Church Marketing 101
A decent definition of marketing is “getting the word out.” Many churches – most churches – are invisible to their neighbors. Add to the thousands of churches that have jumped online during the pandemic, it’s become difficult to make a Read more…
Effective Church Membership
Effective Church Membership: Some churches have done away with church membership … let’s be honest, the only ones who really count today are those who actually show up (and in most churches, that’s well less than 50 percent of their Read more…