6 Ways to Craft an Ineffective Sermon

You have never tried to make your message irrelevant, boring, or incomprehensible. At least I hope not! But you find yourself preaching while questioning your effectiveness. You walk up to deliver a sermon lacking confident in your content. You question your ability. Your capacity. Even your calling. You feel your church more tolerates the message […]

6 Strategies to Succeed in Portable Church (Discovering Permanent Success in a Portable Church, Part 3)

AT A GLANCE…

Read this if…
You are a church leader or church attender in a portable church environment looking for ways to help ensure success.

This post in one sentence…
Six specific ways we have learned to succeed in a portable church environment.

HERE WE GO…

As a church leader, I’ve spent the better part of my professional Christian life in portable church. I’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes, found some advantages, and experience success without a building. In the previous two posts, we discussed portable church challenges and opportunities. Let’s close this conversation by looking at the best ways to succeed in a portable context.

BRING ON THE PIPE AND DRAPE!

Any opportunity, regardless of size or potential, is worthless when not leveraged. In the world of portable church, this is certainly true. So many church leaders (and attendees) allow the challenges of portable church to overwhelm the possibilities. In some cases, I’ve even seen pastors lose their passion for the church in the face of portable challenges.

But being a portable church does not have to be a necessary evil while waiting for your own building. There are ways to make the portable church succeed, and in doing so, possibly influence more people toward Jesus than you could if you owned a building.

6 Opportunities a Portable Church Provides (Discovering Permanent Success in a Portable Church, Part 2)

AT A GLANCE…

Read this if…
You are a church leader or church attender in a portable church environment.

This post in one sentence…
If we can see through the challenges of portable church, we can discover the many opportunities portable provides.

As a church leader, I’ve spent the better part of my professional Christian life in portable church. I’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes, found some advantages, and experience success without a building. In the previous post, we talked about portable church challenges. But there are also opportunities, and ways to succeed.

Let’s look at some portable church opportunities now, and then we can evaluate how to succeed as a portable church in the next post.

LOVING YOUR PORTABLE CHURCH

When you are in the midst of set up and tear down every week, it’s easy to forget there are advantages and opportunities that come with the territory. They are not readily evident at 5:30 a.m. when trailers are being delivered or at 3:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon as the tear down process concludes, but they are there. And when we look close enough, they become evident.

Like most difficulties in life, though, the frustrations and challenges of portable church can mentally and physically outweigh the opportunities portable provides. So before you get too frustrated with your portable challenges, consider these opportunities:

6 Challenges in Portable Church (Discovering Permanent Success in a Portable Church, Part 1)

AT A GLANCE…

Read this if…
You are a church leader or church attender in a portable church environment.

This post in one sentence…
Finding a sense of permanence in a portable church can be challenging, but not impossible.

As a church leader, I’ve spent the better part of my professional Christian life in portable church. I’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes, found some advantages, and experience success without a building. Over the next few posts, we will talk about portable church – the challenges, opportunities, and ways to succeed.

Let’s start with your challenges…

THE CHALLENGE OF PORTABLE CHURCH…

Do you LOVE leading a church in a temporary facility?

Actually, I’m sure there are some pastors who do, but even they would readily admit portable church provides many unique challenges.

MY PORTABLE CHURCH BACKGROUND

I’ve been a Lead Pastor for six years and prior served as a Family Ministry and Student Director for nearly four. That’s nearly a decade of professional Christianity, and most of these years have been spent in temporary facilities. Today, I lead a North Point Ministries campus location for Andy Stanley (Watermarke Church). We average roughly 5,000 people each week meeting in a school. We set up and tear down 40 classrooms, a gym, and a cafeteria every week.

All that to say, like many of you, I’m intimately familiar with portable church.

Before we consider the opportunities and paths to portable success, let’s identify some of the issues. Because leading in a portable facility presents many challenges.

Why People Choose (Fill In The Blank) Over Attending Your Church

It’s a new year and many people came back to your church on Sunday. They will be there for a few more weeks before they quit church and the gym simultaneously. But not EVERYBODY you invited attended church, did they?

You’ve invited them over and over and they still refuse to come.

You’ve offered to buy them lunch after the service, but they still don’t show.

You know they need help with … marriage, parenting, purpose, grace, salvation, et. al. AND your church could be the answer, but they still have excuses to miss every Sunday.

You have tried everything.

Why won’t your unchurched friends just come with you to church ONE TIME? Why won’t they accept your invitation just ONCE?

While there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer, there are certainly some common reasons unchurched people resist church invitations and solutions we as church leaders and attenders can implement.

I recently experienced one of the most prominent reasons to miss church. The last Sunday of the year, our church is closed. We take the day off to give our staff and volunteer base a day to relax, recharge, and spend with their family and friends. So as I woke up on 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning, I caught a glimpse of what most of the world experiences on a Sunday – rest. No alarm. No rushing to get ready. No yelling at the kids. I eased into the day, and it was great. Life is so busy. We are all over-committed. We are all tired. Most families are just as busy on Saturday as during the week. So Sunday becomes the ONE day to actually rest. To sleep in.

But that’s just one reason. Here are a few more you know to be true:

The 17 Best Books I Read in 2014

I love to know what friends and peers are reading. I’m always on the lookout for great books to stretch my theology, skills, and leadership ability.

With that in mind, here are the books I loved the most from 2014. Note these are my favorites… I’ll spare you the full list!

25’ish Books I Hope to Read in 2015

I have a love/hate relationship with goals – especially New Year’s goals. But one area where I always try to set goals is in personal and leadership development. More specifically, I try to begin every year with a list of books to read.

And this year is no different. Here are the books I’m planning to read in 2015.

Putting The Mess Back in the Manger

I love the Christmas story. It’s so beautifully poetic. We always read the Christmas story from Luke 2 to our kids on Christmas Eve. It’s part of our Christmas tradition. We eat homemade pizzas while we read. We love to drive around after dinner and see all the Christmas lights in our neighborhood, too. There’s a place nearby that somehow creates a light show set to music that you can hear on the FM dial in the car. No idea how that technology happens! We open presents from each other, then head to bed awaiting Santa (AKA, I’m up most of the night). It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

But while it’s full of wonder, twinkling lights, presents, and homemade pizza (at least in our house!), the story has lost a lot of its inherent messiness and dirt today. When we think of the sites, sounds, and smells of Christmas, twinkling lights, holiday tunes, and pine tree scents come to mind. But the sites, sounds, and smells we associate to Christmas today couldn’t be further from the first century Christmas experience.

Think about how the first Christmas came to be:

Does Working for the Weekend Work Against YOU?

AT A GLANCE…

Read this if…
You sense there is a connection between time and momentum.

This post in one sentence…
Does time away take away? From our momentum? From our progress? From our purpose?

How you can engage…
Create a “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” list of your own and share it with me in the comments below. And share this post with others who might need to consider the idea, too.

POST:
Is it good to take time off?

I know, I know… sounds like a trick question. But let’s think critically for a moment. Is taking time off ALWAYS a good thing? Loverboy sang “everybody’s working for the weekend…, “ but does working for the weekend ever work against us?

An Observation that Initiated the Question:

I recently took time away from writing. Outside of a few random posts, I didn’t blog for a couple of months. I didn’t really write anything. I won’t bore you with the reasons, but I was excited to get started again. I felt ready to pounce on a blog post like a lion stalking prey. I was mentally refreshed (or so I thought). I assumed two months away would allow me to come back with ideas upon ideas. It was going to be a landslide of great writing. After all, every time I write, I use up an idea; so taking a few months off should in theory create a backlog of options.

So Your Idea Isn’t Perfect…Big Deal!

AT A GLANCE…

Read this if…
You have ever hesitated try something, start something, or develop something.

This post in one sentence…
What should you do if you want to launch something new, but your something doesn’t feel ready?

How you can engage…
Share this specifically with people who have great ideas and need to move forward. Or any perfectionist you know! Lastly, leave a comment with your start story. I’d love to read about your experience.

HERE WE GO…

I have always loved Seth Godin. I’ve probably read all of his books. His blog. Basically everything Seth says resonates with my marketing inner-self.

Seth talks a lot about launching new stuff. He famously labeled it “shipping.” Seth’s stance is simple: “Ship often. Ship lousy stuff, but ship. Ship constantly.” I love that, even though it scares me to death.

Honestly, Seth’s encouragement is the reason I launched a blog. I partially wanted a new, fresh space to ideate and create content, but I also knew launching a blog would be an exercise in “shipping” something. Most likely, shipping something lousy, but at least shipping something.

Recently, I was reminded how true Seth’s stance really is. I was looking over some old blog post and I wanted more than anything to rewrite and republish them all, apologizing to anyone who accidentally endured these early writings in the process. As a blogging newbie, I didn’t know what to write about. I didn’t know how to blog. Once I posted all my Kindle highlights from a book. Who wants to read 5 pages of my highlights!?! And I was not a good conversational writer. For two years I had only written academically (insert incessant footnotes here…), and nobody enjoys reading a textbook! I had no clue how to take the oral communication skill I was developing and transition it to the written word. But I battled through the resistance (another concept I’ve embraced from Seth) and shipped. And I’m glad I did. I still feel sorry for my early readers, but I’m glad I pushed through. And while I’m still not an expert blogger or great writer, I’m learning and improving with each subsequent little shipment.