I want to talk about something that should be obvious, but that a lot of preachers seem to forget or miss: You must work to get and keep the congregation’s attention. If you do not have their attention, then what are you doing? What’s the point? You are wasting your words. You might as well not be speaking. Get some photos of a congreg...

I spent some time this weekend imagining what the perfect Monday morning dashboard for a pastor would be. Here is what I've got so far: Attendance from Yesterday I'd want to know how many people attended the main service yesterday, how that tracks with attendance over the last few months, and how that tracks with attendance this time l...

I am undertaking a very difficult project. One that probably would seem (or should seem) impossible I am trying to build a profitable Church Management Software (CHMS) Company, more or less from scratch, in the next six months. Basically, I'm giving myself six months of super hard work to build Congregation Hub 2.0, launch it to the wo...

So, you've decided that your church needs a new website. Regardless of how user-friendly the church website platform is (or even if you hire a custom web developer), you will still need to provide essential information. In my experience, the biggest obstacle in launching church websites is getting the right people from the church to su...

Here is a hot take: I think every pastor should learn Markdown and write their sermons in it. What is Markdown? Markdown is a way of writing plain text so that it has structure, links, images and is easy to read. You learn a few rules, start writing this way, and your writing can easily be converted into books, blog posts, readme files...

You can make your own church website - you probably shouldn't The Taste/Skill Gap There is a famous quote by Ira Glass (the journalist behind "This American Life") where he talks about taste. ““Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good tast...

Overview Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout is the latest book by Cal Newport. Newport is an MIT-trained computer scientist who is a professor at Georgetown University and a writer for the New Yorker. He has a special gift for identifying the insanity of modern productivity practices and suggesting helpfu...

I've looked at a lot of bad church websites over the last twenty years. Usually, what makes a church website bad isn't a lack of content but things on the site that just do not need to be there. Imagine you go to a nice restaurant. You walk in and immediately notice that all over the restaurant is the restaurateur's creepy doll collect...

Introduction When I was being trained for the ministry, the place where I was trained (Crown College in Powell, TN, if you are wondering) put heavy emphasis on "the great men of the faith." I'm actually very grateful for that emphasis. Without it, I would not have been exposed to people who have shaped my thinking about the Scripture f...

This week, I received an unwanted text from our church's insurance representative. Apparently, we had missed submitting a form, and if we didn't get it to them, our insurance would be cut off. This seems to happen at least once a year. Workers' comp forms, property audit forms, checking on our compliance with child protection policies....

Update: I added a paragraph to the first section because without it, it seemed like I was against all use of AI for sermon prep. Don't Use AI to Cheat Sermon Prep I am absolutely against using Artificial Intelligence for sermon prep. It's not that AI isn't good. If you were to give ChatGPT a prompt like: “Write me a 3000-word sermon on...

Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post about CHAT-GPT. The main goal of the post was to show some legitimate ways to use CHAT-GPT in church while addressing what I believe is its main danger: it could write your entire sermon for you. Surprisingly, the biggest pushback I received wasn't from the Luddites saying, "I don't want to use CH...

Let me get this out of the way: I pastor a church that would fall squarely into the "traditional" and "formal" side of the spectrum. I almost always preach in a tie and sport coat, even on Wednesday evening services. Personally, I like it when people dress up for church. But there is one phrase I've heard a million times in my life tha...

When I was training for the ministry, one of the things I remember my professors saying was, "Put the cookie on the bottom shelf." What they meant by that was that we need to guard against teaching over people's heads. We need to make our teaching accessible to all. I'm all for putting the cookie on the bottom shelf. But I think in som...

About two months ago, I dug deep into my bank account and bought a reMarkable 2 tablet. Having used it every day for the last two months, I thought it may help someone to get a review geared specifically for pastors. First, what even is this thing? The reMarkable 2 is an e-ink tablet about the size of a standard sheet of paper. It allo...

I think everyone should take notes in church. As a preacher, I would much rather see a bunch of people taking notes than to hear a bunch of people shouting “amen.” Why take notes in church: Taking notes in church has several benefits: 1. Attention When you take notes in church, it helps you to pay attention to what the pastor or preach...

Recently, I finished the great book How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens. I had bought this book years ago, but didn't take it very seriously. This time I read it determined to learn all I can and to put it's wisdom into practice. The book is called "How To Take Smart Notes" but it could have been called "How to Read as a Writer" or...

Recently, I finished a project that has been on my mind for a year or so. I wanted to have a computer in my study to use for writing and note taking, where distractions were just about impossible. When I say distractions, I'm talking about the normal subjects like: • Social media • News • Search Engines • Shopping • Youtube But also th...

Overview I'm looking for volunteer help with a personal project called MissionHosts. Mainly I'm looking for someone to help with UI design (screens in figma) although I'm open to help with development too. I've raised a little bit of money I can use to pay help, but this is one hundred percent a volunteer project - no one will ever mak...

I'm generally pro-vaccine. I've had every vaccine available and we've vaccinated our kids. I'm also not anti-vaccination for COVID-19. In fact, there are people I know who I wish would get the vaccine. (More on that later.) What I am very much against is the government mandating this particular vaccine for this particular disease. Let ...

Many of us think that the last year has been a year of unnecessary restrictions on our liberties. Churches were shut down, parks were closed, people were arrested for surfing all alone on beaches, masks were required, schools were shut down, graduations and proms were canceled, stadiums were emptied, arrows showed up in grocery stores,...

Yesterday, I wrote a post about building an app to help families manage technology addiction. You could summarize my post like this: The symptom: Our kids our addicted to technology. The cause: Parents lack the systems and self control to set healthy limits on technology and enforce them. The possible solution: Create an app that helps...