Category: Preaching
Sermon 2.0: The Future of the Preaching and Reaching The Unchurched
by Carey Nieuwhof: In a world where everything’s changing, how should the church change to reach more (not fewer) people? The struggle you have is the likely the struggle most church leaders have: reaching new people seems to be getting harder and harder every year. What if it didn’t have to […]
5 Best Practices For Using Invite Cards At Your Church
by Rich Birch: We live in a digital age, so why are we bothering to talk about paper invitations? Can these little cards that announce upcoming series at your church still be an effective tool in the here and now? Haven’t we moved beyond mass broadcasting to use platforms like […]
Why Cool Church Doesn’t Work Anymore (More on the Future Church)
by Carey Nieuwhof: Everything has its season. And the season of the cool church is, in many ways, coming to an end. Recently, I wrote a post that generated a lot of discussion online and offline about why charismatic churches are growing and attractional churches are past peak. You can read that […]
Why Andy Stanley is Right About Reaching Post-Christians
by Carey Nieuwhof: If you want to reach post-Christian, post-modern people—in other words, the next generation—how do you do it, effectively? Although you might not know it if you just perused social media, the majority of churches are plateaued or dying. And even among growing churches, not all growth is coming […]
6 Ways to Increase Engagement in Your Church’s Weekend Services
by Rich Birch: How do you know that a church service is “successful”? What are the elements that tell you when things are working or not? It’s important that your team shares a clear understanding of what success looks like when it comes to designing weekend services. While there are […]
Declining Attendance and 7 Preaching Shifts That Are Happening Right Now
by Carey Nieuwhof: Every week you host services at your church hoping to reach more people, which is admirable and appropriate. The problem is that the culture is changing and never bothered to ask you permission. In many ways, preachers are using a method that’s been around for centuries…if not millennia…which […]
Want to Reach New People? These 10 Habits Set Your Church Back
by Tony Morgan: What is the first-time guest experience really like at your church? When my team at The Unstuck Group helps a church assess ministry health, one key step we take is to attend and review the church’s weekend experience through the lens of an outsider. That’s because once you […]
5 Tips to Make Series Titles at Your Church More Sticky
by Rich Birch: Churches will often organize their Sunday morning content into series. In the simplest terms, a series is a collection of organized ideas and content that is easy for people to understand and share with their friends. As I discuss in my book, Church Growth Flywheel, leveraging the […]
5 Pro Tips on How to Get Amazing Sermon Feedback
by Carey Nieuwhof: One of the worst feelings any preacher has is finishing up a message and having no idea how it really went. I mean you have your own subjective opinion, but we all know ourselves well enough to realize that sometimes we thought our message was awesome when […]
7 Reasons Your Sermons Are Boring
by Carey Nieuwhof: If there’s one thing you never set out to be as a leader or communicator, it’s boring. And yet everyone who communicates, preaches or even tries to persuade someone of an idea has discovered that sinking sense that you’re sermon just isn’t as riveting as it could be. Or that […]