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!

Recently, I was on a coaching call with a great Executive Pastor that I have the privilege of coaching. He’s working on a building project for his church and as such, he’s moving a lot of money around. 300K almost got moved into a hackers account!

At the end of our coaching call, I said “Hey, can we take 5 minutes and record this story? I want to share it with others so they can learn from you.” I hit record on Zoom. Please forgive the bad lighting and productions skills. This is just meant to be a quick thing to help you out.

Hey friends, I wanted to share some big news in our family and my work, and I’d love to frame these changes in the bigger context of a couple decades of ministry. Skip to end if you don’t feel like reading it all. I posted a shorter version of this on Facebook and Instagram, but I felt like my blog gives me the freedom to unpack things a bit more for those who might care.

Not long after finishing seminary in 2002, I remember sitting in my new church office in upstate NY where I was serving as a Lead Pastor at the time and coming to the realization that I might be in the wrong role. That maybe, ‘Lead Pastor’ was not the right seat on the bus for me, at least at that time. Over the next six months, I spent a lot of time praying, seeking wisdom, and getting input from others. I felt like God slowly but clearly revealed my life’s mission saying “Your job—for the rest of your days—is to help others in the church bring vision into reality”.  That new life mission ultimately led us out of that great church (King’s Chapel) as we helped plant Terra Nova Church in New York’s capital region. Those 9 years as the Executive Pastor with that team were an absolute blast, as together, we saw vision become reality at our church as well as in the northeast region for Acts 29 Network. 

And then that season at Terra came to an end through super clear guidance from the Holy Spirit (I have a whole sermon about it) that ultimately led us to central Florida where I became the Executive Pastor at Mosaic Church and began helping a growing team bring vision into reality. What a wild and action packed ride these last 8 years have been. I will always look back at the projects I got to be involved in with great fondness. But more importantly, each of those projects involved an incredible team of people for whom I was deeply privileged to work with and will miss greatly. 

Now, as our 8 years at Mosaic come to an end, and I round the corner on two decades of serving on staff in local churches, I’m excited for this new season of helping lots of church leaders bring vision into reality throughout the country as I join the team at Elevate Group! For the last 20 years, I’ve given the bulk of my efforts to one church at a time, and then served other churches with my leftovers. Now, I get to the bulk of my time into all sorts of churches and I can’t wait to do so.

I first met Chris Willard, (co-founder at Elevate) in 2015 when we brought him in to help with a major new initiative at Mosaic. Along the way we became great friends and I guess it was only a matter of time before we started working together in a more formal capacity. He and Greg Morris’s new organization is already having a massive impact on churches all over as they help “increase engagement and multiply results”. In so many ways, their companies mission aligns so clearly with the calling language that has guided me personally—“helping bring vision into reality”. This is really just the next step in that journey.

As a side note, I’m equally excited for the freedom this work will give me to put even more time into some of the other ways that I have loved serving pastors, leaders and churches in the last few years. If all goes according to plan, I’ll eventually find myself putting about 60% of my time into helping churches work through Generosity issues for major initiatives, building campaigns, or just looking deeply at their overall approach to giving. I’m committed to putting up to another 20% of my time into coaching Executive Pastors. In the past I’ve always had to limit the amount of time I invested in that to balance it out with my main church job. And the last 20% of my work time will hopefully find a home on the pages of new book projects I’m dying to work on as well as short articles here and there that benefit the church at large. My wife Aimee also has some ministry goals and I want to press into some of those dreams for the future. Stay tuned for more on all that down the road. 

If you read this far, thanks! Please pray for us. This has been a crazy year for sure, but this new step of faith feels really right for Aimee and I at this time and it flows out of many months of prayer.

Recently, I was asked to describe briefly what staff development looked like at our church. After taking a few minutes to sketch out a response it seemed like something that might benefit others so I took a little more time to do this well. I don’t believe this is perfect. I’m sure that there is more that I could and should be doing, or things that I could be doing more effectively, but here is what it looks like in general right now. I’m 100% sure it will change. Here is a year in the life of staff development for me at Mosaic Church . . .

So you’ve read my book on Eldership Development. Maybe you even read a few other books on Elders in the church. They sit nicely on your shelf but you haven’t yet built out your churches process for Eldership Development? What happened? You got busy. You hit a wall. You had too many unanswered questions. Coronavirus happened. I get it. Sometimes, we just need a little extra push and a little extra coaching along the way.