By Doug Talley Ministry is challenging.  If you are a pastor or lay leader, you know that.  Church planting is challenging on steroids.  Starting a church from scratch, gathering people, developing leaders, developing finances, developing and casting a vision, launching.  All of those pieces are critical aspects of planting a church and can be overwhelming.  Imagine launching a church and

By Doug Talley Now that COVID infection rates have dropped significantly in the U.S. and summer is in full stride, many are so desperate for a return to normalcy that they want to ignore the impact of what happened over the last 17 months.  We’d like to shake it off as a bad dream or maybe

By Doug Talley  People are coming back to church.  Tony Morgan, in the A12021 Unstuck Report, says that in-person attendance is down 28% but online service views are up 123%.  Giving is up almost 2%. Even though there is encouraging news about vaccinations and areas of the country reopening as people try to establish some semblance of

By Jeff Matas Seventeen years ago, I sat at my kitchen table writing out a plan for that night’s church board meeting. It was a beautiful July day in the Pacific Northwest. It was one of those days in the Puget Sound that people cherish, bright blue skies and as locals would say, “the mountain

By Doug Talley One area COVID has rocked our world as pastors is in the area of self-confidence.  When the lockdown struck, no one knew what to do.  Things were changing so quickly that in a matter of hours we were making decisions and then retracting them after they had already been announced.  And as we did, we

By Doug Talley Expectations.  Ever since we were kids, we’ve developed expectations of other people, events, situations, and ourselves that led to disappointment when they weren’t realized.  One reason COVID has hit us all so hard is that it took our expectations for 2020 and much of 2021 and then beat them repeatedly over our

By Tom Planck Considering the events of this last year, there are more than a few reasons to expect evidence of a deceleration of impact in the Church.  While this may be the case on some fronts, it certainly has not been the case for the Mission 120 initiative. The Mission 120 initiative is a partnership that exists

By Jeff Matas In the last two months, a well-known Christian apologist’s legacy and life unraveled before our eyes. He was brilliant, articulate, influential, and morally unhinged. We knew about the brilliant and influential part, what we didn’t discover fully until his death was the morally unhinged part. He follows a long list of celebrity

By Doug Talley I decided to take a break from social media last Spring.  It was prompted by a preponderance of political and COVID related rants.  Though I probably rant at times, I don’t find rants helpful.  They are alienating, disrespectful of others, cause people to shut down, and do not foster understanding or progress.  They just make the