We frequently view these smaller churches as merely being recipients of help. Instead, they are partners that often serve as incubators for future ministers and lay ministers of all-sized churches.
All in Church
The Every Sunday Ask
The Holy Spirit will connect us to non-believers. May God bless us as we seek to draw them, invite them, call them into a relationship with Jesus.
A Call for Greater Consideration of Small and Rural Churches
When a small church closes, a community loses both its anchor and the energy generated when it responds to local needs.
Mending Generational Divides: The Practice of Listening for Unity
We all have the capacity to make relational choices that can help mend age segregation in our churches. Specifically, I want to offer one practice for followers of Jesus that can help all of us swim upstream towards greater unity in the generational body of Christ: the practice of listening for unity.
Minister and Elder Relationships
I want to share some encouragement and guidance for how I am trying to maintain and develop healthy relationships with my current shepherds. I am by no means the expert on this dynamic, but I will share what little I have learned in over a decade of congregational ministry, serving in various roles for those churches.
Faithful Conversations in Difficult Spaces
The posture reflected in Acts 15 is the same posture that I encourage my ministry students to practice in our classroom. It is the one that I pray they will eventually bring into the churches they serve. And I wonder if this is the posture that we are currently longing for many of our own churches to pursue.
When Power Replaces Pastors: Matthew 4:8-10
Somewhere along the way, some churches have confused being close to power with being close to God.
Launching the 2026 Ministers' Salary Survey
For over twenty years, the Siburt Institute Ministers’ Salary Survey has sought to help ministers and churches as they navigate the tricky waters of minister compensation. Before launching the 2026 version of the survey, our associate director, Dr. David Kneip, sat down (virtually) with our research director, Dr. Suzie Macaluso, to talk about the survey specifically and congregational research in general.
Are You Worried About the Future?
We know that church leaders need vision to see God’s work, clear eyes to see our ministry contexts, and hope for God’s redeeming work in the world. We know that the future is uncertain, but we also know that God is at work, that the world is not just our enemy, and that we have good grounds for hope!
Spirit of the Living God
The real reason we typically don’t acknowledge the Spirit’s presence in our congregations and in our lives is that if we really took that “potter and clay” stuff seriously, we would have to let go of our control. Our fear of letting go is often stronger than our desire for the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives.
The Spiritual Discipline of Asking Questions
Jesus was quick to keep questions on the forefront of the disciples’ minds. He allowed questions to create space for people to discover, collaborate, discern and commit themselves more to His Spirit and Truth so that they could know more about themselves and about God.
Becoming a Future-Ready Church
By empowering and encouraging rising generations of leaders, you have the opportunity to faithfully steward the responsibility of those whom God has entrusted to your care.
The Twelve Minor Prophets for Today’s Church (Part 5): Imagining the Future
The Twelve Minor Prophets remind us that today’s hot trends sometimes become tomorrow’s embarrassing discards, while seemingly obscure or insignificant things can assume great importance in the future.
The Twelve Minor Prophets for Today’s Church (Part 4): Narrating the Past
The main lesson of the past is not to overvalue the past. Distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, mercy and cruelty, hope and despair. Without that ability to see clearly the stakes and the stakeholders of the moment, we all perish. With it, we live.
The Twelve Minor Prophets and Today’s Church (Part 3): The Prophets as Models
Zechariah is probably not commenting on the literal immortality of one group of people or extinction of others. He means instead that the prophetic word and therefore the witness of the prophets’ lives continues to exert a powerful influence. They spoke in ways that others must reckon with.
The Twelve Minor Prophets and Today’s Church (Part 2): Worship
Worship centers on God—God’s character as the source of all mercy and love and justice, God’s infinity, God’s majesty and mystery. In contemplating God, we see our own sin, our need for redemption and protection, as well as the possibilities of profound spiritual growth.
The Twelve Minor Prophets and Today’s Church (Part 1)
Why should we listen to these prophets? We could start with the obvious: these texts were part of the Bible of Jesus and the apostles. Who would we be to reject the words our Lord took to heart?
A Tale of Two Buildings: Answering “The How” of Intergenerational Ministry
Ministry rarely offers a choice between one building project or the other. Instead, it requires constant movement between both approaches. Leaders spend time honoring and remodeling inherited structures while also investing energy imagining and innovating new possibilities.
Cultivating Culture in Your Leadership Team
So how do you cultivate a healthy culture? In a few conversations I had this past week, the answer to the dilemma that each leadership team presented either found some significant connection to the healthy aspects of the culture or demonstrated a significant area of “cultural” work for the leadership team.
We Need Each Other More Than We Think (Part 3)
It can be ok that that other church or denomination is more successful in our town; we don’t have to find fault with them or let jealousy steal our hearts. It can be ok that, in the past, our groups have had significant conflict; not all inter-group conflict is resolvable, and sometimes we just have to lay down our weapons and move on, seeking first God’s kingdom and righteousness.