Rich Kirkpatrick's Weblog

A conversation on faith & culture for creatives, leaders & influencers

(Main site branding)

Posts Tagged ‘church growth’

Doodle of the Week: Tree Trunk and MISSION!

doodle_tree_trunk

We talked about Jesus and his mission this morning at our staff meeting and this tree with real strong roots came to mind. Perhaps those of us who lead ministries might learn from a tree when thinking of the mission of Jesus. I remember a pastor once saying, “want to grow something fast, grow a mushroom…want to grow something that lasts plant an acorn.” Really, ministry is like a tree. The wind actually makes the tree stronger. Drought forces the root system deeper and farther to sustain life. Oh, the mushroom is impressive if you have no sense of time or no brain at all.

Are we too impressed with mushroom-like church growth, personal growth today to be patient for the tree that has structure to actually last?

download wallpaper file of this weeks doodle

Butts in seats: Measuring success in ministry is more than a numbers game

Defining success seems about as hard as attaining success. The question, of course is all about this: what is the win? Often in ministry our metrics for success have more to do with institutional wins rather than the winning of people. Dallas Willard calls this measuring the ABCs–the measuring of attendance, buildings and cash. The butts in the seats, our facilities and capacity to hold those butts and the ability to fund more and more butts in seats make it on our spreadsheets in ministry leadership meetings. (more…)

Recent comments

On Twitter