Does your productivity run in spurts? Mine does. And it’s not always at the time I want it to be. This graphic pretty much sums it up:   I’m a night owl… and some of my best work comes when I’m ready for bed. That’s frustrating. I’m slowly learning to be more productive early in the day… in fact… sometimes I can fit what seems to be a full day of work into the first couple hours of the day… when it’s quiet, and when I’m fresh. What’s your productivity graph look like? Read more...

Pastor Ryan Budde from Croswell Wesleyan Church in Michigan has a small problem on his hands.  A member of his church has recently been arrested for hosting a cancer fundraising benefit to help pay her medical bills.  Problem is… she doesn’t have cancer. The 38 year-old woman is facing eight charges in a couple different investigations (in 2001, the woman said a man raped her in a Meijer parking lot and that she received a sexually transmitted disease from the rape.  That, she said, is what caused her cancer).  And last September, she claimed she was sexually assaulted again.  The...

St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach, CA may be without a building soon. They are trying to retain their building since their split from the US Episcopal Church over widening differences of biblical interpretations and the confirmation a few years back of the first openly gay Episcopal Bishop. The Episcopal Diocese is suing St. James and two other Orange County churches for their property. As it currently stands, St. James will need to appeal the current decision of the court, giving the property to the diocese.  If the appeal does not go through, the church will have to vacate the property...

Press release from my friends at Exponential: On the heels of Exponential ’13 in Orlando selling out and drawing 5,300 leaders on site and 40,000 to the live Exponential ’13 Webcast, Exponential has announced plans for an Exponential West 2013 this October. The conference will be hosted by Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Oct. 7-10, and like the recent Orlando event will focus on discipleship. For the last several years, Exponential has been asked to bring the annual event held in Orlando each April to the West Coast. However, Exponential leaders have been deliberately...

As we mourn the death of Dallas Willard today, here is a recent short (15 minute) word of exhortation recorded by Dallas for all pastors and church leaders:

According to Christianity Today, Dallas Willard, a prominent philosopher on a “quiet quest to subvert nominal Christianity“ (according to a 2006 CT profile), died today after losing a battle with cancer. He was 77. Not long after news broke, InterVarsity Press associate publisher Andrew T. Le Peau wrote on his blog that the University of Southern California philosophy professor will be missed for his “strong, gentle wisdom, remembering him as someone who was soaked in the presence of Christ.” Our prayers go out to the Willard...

OK… I know we don’t take our cues from foul-mouthed comedians, but Louis has some great words on patience and hard work. He is one of the most successful comedians working today, and made headlines in the past couple of years for going out on a limb and creating his own distribution system for his comedy… sidestepping production companies and the Comedy channel. But that has brought him questions like this (and surprisingly, I’ve heard this same question asked of successful church leaders): Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special, and your tour...

Thom Rainer recently did an ‘autopsy’ of a church that shut it’s doors.  Here are 11 things that he observed.  Let them be warning signs for all of us to the life cycle of churches and what we need to do to make our churches healthy: The church refused to look like the community.  The church had no community-focused ministries.   Members became more focused on memorials.  The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. There were no evangelistic emphases. The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted. With few exceptions, pastoral tenure...

John D. Witvliet thinks so: Hymnals are especially well suited to good group singing of many kinds of songs (though not all). Hymnals are portable. Hymnals are splendid for home piano or keyboard devotional playing. Hymnals are an efficient one-stop worship planning resource. Hymnals make it relatively easy to stumble on and fall in love with good music you never thought you would like. Well-designed hymnals offer a vision of a balanced thematic diet. Hymnals help connect songs with elements of worship. Hymnals give people access to a “cultural memory bank” that many desperately want. Hymnals can...

Freedom is coming to an end as we know it… and the end times are here (or at least the book 1984 is coming true).  What do you think?