The Third Service Question – When Is It Time?
The chairs will tell you when you’re full. They won’t tell you what to do about it.
New post on the real factors behind adding a service – culture, staffing, and mission, not just math.
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Before You Vote: A Delegate’s Field Guide to Disagreeing Like Family
Convention week will test more than our resolutions. It’ll test whether we can disagree like family.
A practical field guide for delegates before the floor, on the floor, and after the gavel falls. Link in bio.
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Butter, Play-Doh & Jesus
Imagine sitting outside with butter in one hand and an open container of Play-Doh in the other. We are like one of them. Which describes you?
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50.1%: A Mirror, Not a Mandate
After three rounds of balloting, Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison has been re-elected LCMS President with 50.1% of the vote. That number is not just a statistic. It is a diagnosis.
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Before They Are Opponents, They Are Family
One of our greatest challenges isn’t theological. It’s relational. And the path forward begins not with them changing first but with me.
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When A Friend Dies
I got a call this morning and I’m still not quite sure how to process it. A longtime member of our congregation died today. And I know that’s part of this. I know that’s the job, I know I’ve done this more times than I can count, but today just hit different, and I’ve been…
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The Front Door Nobody Is Using
The mission infrastructure your congregation needs already exists. Most of it just isn’t pointed at anything yet.
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The Assumption That’s Killing Us
There’s an accusation quietly circulating in Lutheran circles right now, and it usually sounds something like this: “If your church is growing, you must be watering something down.” It gets dressed up in more refined language with concerns about “faithful catechesis,” questions about “theological integrity,” whispers about whether a congregation is “truly confessional.” But strip…
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Merge, Multiply, or Die: The Conversation Nobody Wants to Have and Everybody Needs
Faithfulness sometimes looks like letting go of what you’ve built so that something greater can be born. The case for merger, consolidation, and multisite as mission strategy — not institutional survival.
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The Chaplaincy Trap
The Outward Turn · Part One If your church ceased to exist tomorrow, would anyone outside your congregation know it was gone? Sit with that question for a moment before you answer it. Not the people on your roster. Not the families who would miss Sunday morning. Not the pastor whose livelihood depends on the…
