Scott Gress

By now you are probably aware that the number of people who are self identifying as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” has skyrocketed from 16% in 2007 to 23% in 2014 as reported by the Pew Research Center (https://pewrsr.ch/1cUpSZ9).

Sure you are busy. Sure you have limited energy. Sure there are headwinds. Sure things get complicated and messy. Of course you can’t control everything. Naturally there are people and systems and structures that get in the way. Sure it

Don’t people know that this is assumed behavior for church members, not to mention disciples of Jesus? They are supposed to be in worship and Bible class! Then after they get that right they will prayerfully, hopefully, include other things

A pretty common challenge among churches has to do with the number of people in the pews on Sunday morning. In the words of a sainted mentor of mine from years ago, “there is more wood than people” meaning there

If you don’t want things to change then all you need is management. If you want things to change though, you need leadership. Yet do you want the kind of  leadership where things blow up? Certainly not. We want healthy

We make a lot of assumptions about what we do and how we do it. It is often necessary to make assumptions. It is more efficient that way. Assumptions allow us to put some things on autopilot. This is necessary

“It can’t be me. I’m not the problem. I preach evangelism. I preach serving. I work a lot of hours caring for others. I can’t do anything more. How can I be the problem? In fact, I’m a little bit

In the last blog we wrote about the 10 reasons we don’t invite other people to church. Often the biggest barrier is the first reason: we haven’t “outed” ourselves as Christians. It is far easier to be “undercover” Christians. So