A funny thing happened to me last week.  I went to a meeting.  I didn’t log into a meeting.  I went there.  I put on long pants (not my favorite part), drove to the church, small talked then got to the purpose of our time together.  An hour later I was back in my car […]

In the last week the churches of the East Ohio Annual Conference have scrambled to figure out how to live stream their worship services.  Some have full-blown Sunday morning productions, others are pastors in front of their cell phones offering a message and a prayer. And once they got that figured out by Sunday, they […]

I often get a comment like “We haven’t done a stewardship campaign in decades. We don’t need to, we always pay the bills.” Or sometimes it’s “We don’t really talk stewardship in our church, it makes people uncomfortable.” Or my favorite is “We don’t want to be the church that always talks about money.” All […]

The Board of Directors at the Foundation has spent the last year in a strategic planning process.  We are a much different organization than when I got here seven years ago and we were trying to get a handle on what exactly our role should be. My elevator speech has always been that the Foundation […]

Last night I met with a local church’s Finance Committee.  They spent a few minutes going over the financials, discussing the pluses and the minuses.  They they got to me to talk stewardship. Here’s the problem.  It was the Finance Committee.  They had just looked at financial statements.  And they wanted to talk about money.  […]

If you’re a regular reader of this space you know that missions are important to me.  In fact, if I could only have the church do one thing, I would skip worship, Sunday School and (gasp!) even committee meetings and just do missions.  But clearly missions would be more difficult without the other things. How […]

I had a great consultation last week with a pastor who had an interesting dilemma, one that many wish they were in.  The church was about to receive a significant bequest from a member and he was looking for some guidance before meeting with the family to discuss its best use in ministry. I, of […]

I was recently part of a discussion about gifts of life insurance to the church and whether or not I like them. (I know, you’re amazed at how exciting my life is, aren’t you?) Given the question “Is life insurance a good gift to give the church?” My answer is a definitive maybe. It depends […]

Here is my report from Annual Conference this morning, including links to the two videos. All week we have heard from church people.  As a change of pace, I’d like to open my presentation with the perspective of a volunteer firefighter. Justin, the video if you would http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bezos_a_life_lesson_from_a_volunteer_firefighter.html Get in the game.  Save the shoes. […]

  Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for the children.  Why nobody tries to leave better children to the planet? That’s one of my favorite quotes, and as a parent of two above average teenagers, it is one that I have taken to heart for the last 16 years. We do an awful lot […]