“They thought their business model could just roll out.” I’ve watched forty years or so of church ministries franchise themselves as the future of the church without having the humility or awareness to realise that they were a lot more dependent on local circumstances and personalities than they thought. “The company said that it would …
If you’ve talked to folk in churches that have a culture of decline they generally all agree there’s one reason that caused it and one solution to fix it: their pastor. They seem oblivious to every choice they make as a church that cultivates decline, and wistfully yearn for the person who will see people …
I’ll be getting a copy of Karl Vater’s book Small Church Essentials. While the main cross-cultural issue is that characterising a congregation of under 250 people as a small church in Australia is an over-reach, the observations about group dynamics in groups of varying sizes should hold true. This excerpt about who shapes culture in …
Sam Rainer offers some observations about church culture: whether the pace of change can be attributed to complacency or other elements of culture that mean that change does not take place at the same pace as other places. Wise pastoral leadership will take the time to learn what is behind the church’s culture, and also …
