Recently, I had the opportunity to represent the great company I work for full time (www.plainjoestudios.com) on Tony Morgan’s Unstuck Podcast as we talked through five mistakes churches make with their physical space. You can listen to the podcast (episode 305) on your favorite podcast app or at the Unstuck website. Tony was a great host and we had a great conversation! If you want to take the conversation further, reach out to me at [email protected].

For the last couple of years, I’ve had the privilege of working with PlainJoe-A Storyland Studio. We’ve helped a ton of churches and non-profits tell their story well through branding, new church buildings or updating existing buildings. This spring we decided to give away 200 hours of design time to one deserving church or non-profit. No strings attached. No catch! A church or non-profit will be able to utilize this for just about anything that we do. For example, if a non-profit really wanted to update it’s branding and website, that would be a great use of this. Or let’s say a church really needs to update it’s lobby and kids space and wants to raise money to do the work, they could utilize this to get blue sky design work done and then use the imagery that emerges from that time to raise the needed funds to implement the designs. If you want to enter, you’ll need to do so by July 3rd. It’s not hard, just upload a video. It could even be on your phone. You’ll find everything you need on www.plainjoestudios.com !

Church buildings are incredible tools for ministry, but often times they need a few tweaks to make them even more effective. Here are six questions to ask about your building—and how well it is actually meeting your goals as a church.

Recently, my good friend and fellow author, John Stange, asked me to contribute a chapter to a book he was editing called “My First Years In Ministry”. It was fun to take some time to think back on those early years post seminary around 2002-2005. If you know someone who is new in ministry, you’ll find the book on Amazon!

Eight Practices For Effective Online Giving

I’ve spent a lot of time on church websites recently. Like, dozens of hours on hundreds of websites! Along the way, I noticed some trends about online giving. Having grown by 21% in 2020 alone, this is an area of leadership that deserves our full attention. Here are eight online giving practices that effective churches are doing right now. 

Have you ever tried to read the Bible in a year? How’d that work out for you? I tried it once. I got behind after a few weeks, got discouraged, and stopped. Then I found a two-year plan. I stuck with that one a little longer, but still found that it left little time to wander into other passages that were not in the plan. Finally, I decided to look for a three-year plan and I’ve been doing it for almost ten years!

Having spent 17 years in the Executive Pastor role, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know many of my peers in ministry. At the risk of oversimplification, I have noticed that most XPs (shorthand for Executive Pastor) fall into one of two categories.

There were ferns and moss growing in between the tiles that had long since come detached from the concrete floor. Sunlight streamed through the leaking roof creating interesting shadows in this massive 78,000 sq. foot space. The smell of mold was overpowering even with the required mask. It was quiet, desolate even—the calm before the storm. Exactly one year later, on December 10^th 2017, 3800 people piled into this building for the grand opening of our new church home.

Recently, I was talking with a friend who taking his first position as an executive pastor. He asked me for input on what his first few months should look like. I remembered that a few years ago, when I was new at a church, I had jotted down a few simple notes on what my first few months would look like. I shared that file with him and he found it to be very helpful, so I figured I’d share it here as well. Here it is, unfiltered.

The second book in the “Backstage Pastors” series is available on Amazon.com. Eldership Development-From Application to Affirmation can be purchased in E-book and Paperback formats.

There have been many great books written on the need for biblically qualified elders in the church. They do an excellent job unpacking the pertinent scriptures and theology to explain both why we need elders and what they should look like, act like, smell like, etc. once we have them. This is not one of those books.

A few years ago, I was out running one morning with a guy in my church who has helped me a great deal in thinking through the discussion that surrounds generosity. In between strained breaths, he recounted for me some of the things that he thought our church was really good at. I knew that a “But” was on it’s way. And then he said it. “But you know what our church is not so good at?”

Recently, my friend and fellow author Aubrey Sampson asked me to be on her radio show in Chicago called “The Common Good”. Yes, people still listen to the radio! I got to talk about the importance of generosity in the church and the importance of cultivating a generous lifestyle personally. I had exactly 9 minutes! And the producer for the show let me know that it would air at exactly 4:19PM. (Man, live radio is stressful!). If you feel like listening to my rapid fire interview, you’ll find it here. And if you’ve never seen Aubrey’s books, you should look her up on Amazon! Enjoy!