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Posts from the “Church” Category

You know that great idea you have for a church? It’s probably not so great…

Posted on February 22nd, 2012

…but it’s okay. There’s a way around that. Last fall, I read a great book on startups called The Lean Startup by Eric Reis. I know, I know – you have problems with the mash up of business talk and church talk. I do, too. The great thing is that this book hates “business talk” as well. Everything Reis writes is based on the idea that traditional business practices are good for traditional businesses, but that start ups are completely different beasts. Much of what he offers is golden, but here is the most golden thing: The #1 job of a startup is to learn. Here’s what Reis has to say on theleanstartup.com: Too many startups begin with an idea for a product that…

Categories: Church

Tagged: church of the savior, covenant community church, intentional communities, start ups

2 Comments

Top 5 things I’ve learned from 6 months of being nobody’s pastor

Posted on February 18th, 2012

About six months ago, I left the congregation I had been serving to begin service to a regional level of my denomination. This is the first time in almost 10 years that I’ve not actively served a local congregation (in some capacity) on a regular basis, and a few things have brought themselves to my attention. I’m a firm believer in the Pareto Principle. Most of us know it as the “80-20 Rule”, and it states that 80% of the output is the result of 20% of input. I look at everything this way, constantly trying to pare down the things I’m doing to what is actually effective and beneficial. Naturally, attending other churches with the kind of insider knowledge I have means that (for a…

Categories: Church

Tagged: 80-20 rule, congregational life, hospitality, pareto principle, preaching, sunday school, worship

14 Comments

Landon’s Law of Declarations of Oppression

Posted on February 16th, 2012

Yesterday, I tweeted this: I am so damn tired of privileged white, straight people playing the victim card. #youveneverbeenoppressed This was in response to a trend I’ve seen for a while, but is cresting in the particular religious world I live in. In short, it is increasingly the case that those who have historically been in the majority on several issues are now not, and it is making folks crazy. There are some that, to their credit, are doing the very hard work of trying to reframe their understanding of living in a community that they do not wholly resonate with, but so many more are playing a game I find deplorable. Persons who have historically occupied positions of privilege have begun to declare that the…

Categories: Church, Philosophy

5 Comments

Infastructure matters

Posted on February 14th, 2012

Who cares if there’s a GigantoMegaSuperStore over there if there are no roads leading to it? In this time of restructuring and change, we need to make sure that we are paying attention to the the infrastructure of the system. We have to make sure that the Big Ideas we are generating have some place to go because it truly is about arriving at a destination. In the place I live, real estate development is exploding. It seems like every single day there is a new building going up here or there. But for a long time all there was were roads. Roads leading nowhere. But when they put those roads in, they did it with the plan that, someday, there was going to be…

Categories: Church, Leadership

1 Comment

Dear God, please stop calling pastors

Posted on February 9th, 2012

Dear God, I know we talked earlier, but I have something important that I’d like to ask you so I thought I’d send you a letter. I usually do better thinking through thoughts when I write them out. Don’t think that you need to give me an answer right away, but I’d sure love an answer sooner rather than later. So, here’s the deal: I’d like to ask you to stop calling “pastors” to the ministry. As I understand it (from that awesome book of yours) the word “pastor” is drawn from the word “shepherd.” The purpose of the shepherd is to protect and provide for the sheep, to feed them well, and keep them healthy. To be sure, sometimes this means that the…

Categories: Church, Evangelism, Leadership

Tagged: church planting, evangelism, evangelists

24 Comments

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  • You know that great idea you have for a church? It’s probably not so great…
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  • Giving up chocolate and beer for Lent is not what Jesus had in mind
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