Thom S. Rainer

Latest

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  Oct 23, 2015

  8 Traits of Outstanding Church Staff Members

  The stories are tragic but too common. Different members of a church staff unite in opposition to other staff.

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  Oct 17, 2015

  Is Your Church Mostly Old People? 5 Ways to Become Younger

  It seems to be a Catch-22. If your congregation is older, the way to reach younger families is to have younger families in your church. But the reason the congregation is older is because it has few or no younger families.

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  Oct 14, 2015

  9 Essentials for Guest-Friendly Church Bulletins

  In many circles, the church bulletin or worship folder is perceived to be old school, the tool of staid and traditional churches. Leaders with such a perspective are missing an incredible opportunity to put something in the hands of guests that, at least anecdotally, increases the chances they will return.

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  Oct 12, 2015

  10 More Ways Churches Drive Away First-Time Guests

  On November 1, 2014, I wrote a blog post about ten ways churches drive away first-time guests. Those top ten ways came from an informal Twitter poll. I was surprised by the number of responses we received for both the poll and the blog post.

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  Oct 10, 2015

  10 Signs Your Pastor Is Becoming a Chaplain

  In the broadest sense, a chaplain refers to those who are assigned to care and provide ministry for a specific group of people. Military and hospital chaplains, for example, have clearly defined groups who come under their care and ministry.

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  Oct 4, 2015

  7 Reasons We Shouldn't Abandon the Term 'Church Member'

  One of the more frequent question readers have asked me is: "Do you think the term 'church member' is still relevant?"

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  Oct 2, 2015

  7 Internal Barriers to Church Growth

  There is rarely a simple explanation for the decline of a church. It is often a complex mix of cultural, theological, attitudinal, and internal issues. In this article, I address the latter issue.

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  Sep 27, 2015

  20 More Really Weird Things Said to Pastors

  If you get a group of pastors and church staff together, you will inevitably hear some pretty unusual comments they received from church members. So I did an informal Twitter poll to get some of these comments in writing.

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  Sep 24, 2015

  5 Problems With Church Committees

  At some point in my ministry, I became allergic to committee meetings. I realized I was spending a lot of time in those meetings that could be used for productive ministry.

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  Sep 20, 2015

  What If I Could Only Have 25 Books in My Minister's Library?

  I recently gave away thousands of my books in my library. I only have a few left. In the exercise of deciding which few books I would keep, I asked myself a hypothetical question: What if could keep only 25 of the books?