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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You’re Not Afraid of the Dark. You’re Afraid of What the Light Will Show.
What happens when the light shows up in the places you’ve been hiding things You have a junk drawer. Don’t try to deny it. It’s the one in the kitchen. The one you close quickly when someone asks where the spoons are. It has a bottle opener, a lighter, some keys you can’t throw away…
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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…
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You Keep Going Back to the Wrong Well
Why the thing you’re drinking from isn’t satisfying the thirst you actually have We have a spring on the back of our property. It’s not dramatic. Just a wet spot on a hill that never dries out. Even in July when everything else is cracked and brown. Even in the winters when the temperature drops…
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You Already Speak the Language. You Just Don’t Know It Yet.
Why your passion is a doorway and not a distraction I have a friend whose entire world was sports. Not casually interested in sports. Completely fluent in sports. He could give you the batting average of any Reds player from 2014. He could tell you the rushing yards from every Buckeyes game he’d ever watched….
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The Institution Is Not the Church
A hard reckoning about numbers, urban deserts, and what it means when a denomination forgets the difference between preserving a structure and advancing a kingdom. Last week I wrote about the sale of Concordia Ann Arbor and I asked a hard question about what it reveals when a denomination puts a price tag on a…
