Now we’re on a roll!  I’m continuing to scour my archives in search of my favorite blog posts while I’m out of town through next week.  Today, I’m bringing you the all-time most widely read posts I’ve ever written.  And the thing is, I put off writing these posts for over a year!  Originally a three part series back in July of 2009, today you get the condensed version.

I was part of a church that died.

What made it even more painful was that my family had planted the church. My Dad was the pastor.

Despite our best intentions, our plans, our prayers, the church did not just die, but was killed. It was as if no matter how many times we put Satan on notice to leave us alone, he kept sending the exact wrong people to our doorstep. The church wasn’t killed all at once one day, but over some years as each person came in, chipped away at us, and left.

Ten People Who Will Kill Your Church

The Musician

I know there’s a lot of musicians who read this blog, so I’ll just ask you directly. Why are so many of you a bunch of whiny, insecure-yet-pretentious prima donnas? Honestly, we had a string of musicians all the way back to the beginning of the church who felt they were much more talented, worth more money, and more indispensable than they ever could hope to be. I’ll take an average musician with a good attitude any day over these characters.

The musicians killed the church because the church believed they were indispensable.  Wrong. Try having worship without music. People did it for centuries, and still do it.

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Today I’m continuing my countdown of my favorite blog posts while I’m out of town.  These were the posts that got the most readers, comments, Google searches, or the ones I just liked best.  I’m posting them, slightly rewritten, for those of you who may have missed them, and for my long time readers who originally commented on them.  This post originally appeared June of 2009.

What if we lived in a perfect world?

In a perfect world, there’d be teleportation so we wouldn’t have to walk in the rain, waffle irons wouldn’t spill all over the place, and Star Wars Episodes 1-3 wouldn’t exist.

Perhaps some of us have thought that in a perfect world, all of us would be Christians. We’d all get along and hold hands and side hug. I’ve got a few other ideas about what the world would be like though…

What if We All Were Christians?

No One to Witness To

When you have company over, you probably let them eat off of your plates. You serve them real food too. You probably picked up the old newspapers and clean the gunk out of your bathroom sink before they come over. You showered and got dressed. But when it’s ‘just family,’ you’re eating frozen pizza off of paper towels. Ah! Ah! Don’t deny it! You might wander around the house half dressed in your pajamas all day. You call the dog into the kitchen to lick up the spilled food rather than mopping the floor. No, I don’t do that. I just know that everyone else does. I don’t wear pajamas, thank you.

It’s a lot the same with Christians mixing it up with ‘others.’ When we’re in mixed company, we’re on call for ‘witnessing.’ We’re on our best behavior. Don’t want to be the ‘party foul’ guy that makes Christians everywhere look like hypocrites. But when it’s ‘just us Christians,’ I suspect things could get a little lax. When everyone is ‘just us Christians,’ well let’s just say I’m coming to church truly ‘as I am.’ If I’m half dressed in a stained t-shirt, with three-day stubble and insane bed head, that’s how God made me, and I’m beautiful. I’m not here to impress you, but hey, I got it, so I flaunt it.

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Hey everyone!  From June 14-25, I’ll be out of town on vacation, and although I’ll still be online a bit to read a few blogs and make a few comments, I’ll be having a blog break.  So, over these two weeks, I’m digging through my extensive archives, and counting down some of my favorite posts from my eighteen months of blogging.  Today’s post is a vintage Valentine’s Day post, and was the first I wrote that grabbed a ton of inadvertant Google searches, and it still gets a lot today.  I’m posting it, slightly rewritten, for those of you who may have missed it, and for my long time readers who originally commented on it.  This post originally appeared February of 2009.

278 NEW ways to please your man!

All year long, women’s interest magazines boast of dozens of “secrets” to pleasing men. 

I don’t think I have to read the magazines to know what “pleasing your man” pertains to. I think you know what it means too.  If I’m right, I also think I can give you better advice on how please your man in one word than they can give you in 278 points:

More.

That’s it. Whatever you’re doing right, do it more.

Pretty simple advice, no?

But after all these years, the millions of magazines, the hundreds of thousands of ways women have been told to please their men, it seems they still haven’t figured it out. Because these magazines still think it needs to be said. And women keep reading the articles!   Honestly, how has the human race lasted this long with no one knowing how to procreate satisfactorily?  Men don’t know what women want either, and there’s just as much being circulated in men’s magazines. But you don’t see men’s magazines up front at the check-out line. I guess if women knew what their men were reading, they would lose their motivation to please them so much.

The reason women haven’t figured it out is that magazine writers are tools most of the time. Case in point, this issue of Cosmopolitan. 293 new fashion trends? Really? How many ways are there to dress yourself? And when it comes to the mag’s advice on relationships, some woman actually takes it, and her husband inevitably responds, “Agh! What on earth are you doing?” And all she can say is, “I’m pleasing you, honey.”

You don’t need a magazine to tell you how to please your man. I got your “pleasing” right here in three steps. Three. That’s how a man does it.

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For the last few weeks, I’ve been covering all the ways I can think of that the church is failing big time.

We fail at our ministries, we fail at having the right priorities.  We fail at preaching, at praying, at being relevant, and reacting to criticism.  And in general, we fail to be Christ to those around us.

I’m wrapping up FAIL Month with three final thoughts today.

 Ignorance is bliss.

I opened up this blog series because I’ve noticed a whole lot of Christian boasting on the internet about their churches and ministries, and not a whole lot of people admitting to failure.  Everyone loves to talk about how God “showed up” at church last week, but then we all cover for God when He’s tardy or truant.  Unsurprisingly, my one little blog did not make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.  People have not suddenly confessed all their disappointments to all the online world.

I also pointed out I don’t really like George Barna.  Nothing against him personally.  It’s just his work that depresses me.  I just want to tell him that if he doesn’t have anything nice to say, he shouldn’t say anything at all, because everything he says just frightens and saddens me.  Every statistic that he publishes shows that despite all our best efforts and “successes” we boast about, the American church is shrinking really fast. 

Usually after reading a bit of Barna’s statistics, I have to listen to about thirty minutes of Glenn Beck, just as a little pick-me-up.  Something about his ranting about the imminent end of the world that just makes me want to prance barefoot through a meadow of daffodils. Continue Reading…

As a pastor, I’ve had a lot of failed sermons.

I’d rather not mention them, or even think about them.  Chances are, no one else remembers them but me.  But they were bad.  But to my credit, I was young, inexperienced, and kind of stupid.  So you can cut me some slack.  And now I’d like to think that between sermons and teaching and other speaking engagements, I kind of know what I’m doing.

That’s why I can’t stand to listen to guys who have way more experience than me and still don’t seem to get it. 

I listen to a bunch of preachers.  Today, you have access to more preachers than ever before.  Between radio, the internet, and public access TV, any preacher can get a platform.  Yet one of the biggest reasons people say they left the church is lousy preaching.  It seems we’re going for quantity and not quality when it comes to sermons.  I’m not talking about lack of natural talent or giftedness.  I’m talking about preachers making some ridiculous mistakes to doom their sermons to failure.

I’m making a humble call to pastors everywhere to knock it off when it comes to these mistakes.

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Know what churches need more of?  Awesomeness. 

All the experts say the church is dying, maybe because churches are just too lame.  So congregations everywhere are scrambling around, trying to figure out how they can trick the masses into showing up.  Churches try to add new contemporary services, or have big events that aren’t church, but everyone likes them, or just try to do an image makeover to look more relevant.  Some attempts are really cool and original.  But a lot…well, I’m not sure what we’re doing, but it isn’t expanding God’s kingdom.

Here’s what I mean.

Qualification Fail

Here’s where a lot of churches start with their attempt to grab new people – hire a totally awesome new person.  If churches can just get someone that understands young people, and pop culture, and knows what on earth “Twitter” is, then obviously, we will have done enough, because it’s now that person’s job to reach young people.

I was a youth pastor for three years.  I got “hired” (I use the term loosely, because there was no money involved) on the qualification that I was 20 years old, I looked reasonably mature, and my involvement would mean no one else need concern themselves with the youth.  My age and awesomeness was supposed to be an asset in bringing in new kids to our youth group, as I was practically still a high schooler.

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