Church & Ministry

Church & Ministry equips leaders and everyday believers to build healthy, gospel-centered congregations. Explore biblically grounded articles on church leadership, preaching and teaching, eldership, staff and volunteer development, discipleship systems, small groups, church planting, church growth, and ministry strategy. You’ll also find practical guidance for navigating transitions, cultivating congregational health, and serving your community with wisdom and compassion. Whether you’re a pastor, elder, ministry staff member, volunteer leader, or church member who wants to help your church thrive, this hub brings together resources to strengthen the local church and advance Christ’s mission.

December 2, 2013

Christian Standard

Sometimes the Best Things Aren”t Planned

By Jennifer Johnson “We didn”t set out to recruit three African-American church planters for our 2014 plants,” says Brent Storms, president of the Orchard Group, a church planting organization based in New York City. “Our goal is always to find the very best young leaders, and Watson, Jordan, and Derrick were simply the right people.” Watson Jones will plant in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, an area rich in history and diversity, but with little church attendance and a growing Islamic community. Jordan Rice, currently a leadership resident at Forefront Church in Manhattan, will start a church in Harlem, once

December 1, 2013

Michael C. Mack

What Are God”s Goals for Your Group Next Year?

By Michael C. Mack What”s God going to do in and through your small group in 2014? Now is the time to prayerfully ask that question, set some goals, and make some plans for next year and beyond. Perhaps you need to confront the brutal facts of your current reality, as author Jim Collins put it in Good to Great, “When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self- evident.” That”s what we did at Northeast Christian Church several years ago. We wanted to determine if our

October 31, 2013

Christian Standard

Imperfect People””Perfect Plan

By Dyke McCord   Let me tell you about how my elders and I function together. While there will always be differences of opinion, the elders and ministry staff at my church demonstrate unity (Ephesians 4:11-13). Our support for one another privately and corporately leads to high levels of trust within the body. These are not yes-men, but rather men with strength of character and a level of support that demonstrates, “No matter what, we”re going to get through this together.” We all work to be genuine and transparent. Leadership credibility is the result.   Boundaries Our elders don”t protect

October 29, 2013

Mark A. Taylor

Self-Fed

By Mark A. Taylor Usually my wife and I grab something at a restaurant after church on Sunday morning, but a few weeks ago the church fed me lunch. It was an information meeting for small group leaders at our church, and the menu was box lunches from one of my favorite local cafes. I tried the chicken salad sandwich. Never had it before””it was great! There were extra meals on hand after the meeting, so each of us could take a couple home with us. My wife and I enjoyed ours the next day. So that means the church

October 27, 2013

Christian Standard

Interview with Steve Wingfield

By Paul Boatman Steve Wingfield serves as senior pastor with First Christian Church in Florissant, Missouri. With an average attendance of 1,200, this church in the largest suburb of St. Louis faces challenges endemic to churches in changing suburban communities.   Give us a brief summary of your history with First Christian. My dad, Charles Wingfield, was called to preach here in 1972 when I was 10 years old. The church was running about 150 to 170. I grew up in this church, went away to Bible college, and then ministered four years in another place. In 1987 the church

October 22, 2013

Mark A. Taylor

We”re Doing Well, but Not Well Enough

By Mark A. Taylor A generation ago, Dr. Steve Hancock made sure his graduate Christian education students understood the principles of Sunday school growth. One of the rules, which he learned at the Southern Baptist seminary he attended, went something like this: “New classes grow faster, win more people to Christ, and develop more workers than existing classes.” We don”t hear much about Sunday school growth nowadays. But church growth, especially growth through church planting, is on everyone”s radar. Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, is a Southern Baptist church growth advocate for today”s generation. And he says “any movement

October 21, 2013

Christian Standard

The Ministry of Christian Scholarship

By Thomas Scott Caulley Nearly 20 years ago, Mark Noll, then a professor at Wheaton College, began his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, with a simple and provocative assertion: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”1 He described his work as a “cry of the heart” on behalf of the intellectual life by one “who embraces the Christian faith in an evangelical form.”2 Compared to other religious groups, Evangelicals fare poorly on the intellectual scene. One symptom of this problem, according to Noll, is they support no specifically Evangelical

October 20, 2013

Michael C. Mack

Restoring Life to Your Small Group

By Michael C. Mack QUESTION: Our small group started strong, but now it”s dead. We launched around an eight-week churchwide campaign. The first meeting had all the signs of a successful group, but by week five couples who had been so excited about being in a group started making excuses why they couldn”t stick with their commitment. One by one they began to drop out. To make the group more convenient, we began meeting every other week. The group dwindled even more. People lost track of when we were meeting and didn”t come. Finally we just decided to pronounce the

October 19, 2013

Christian Standard

You Are Called to Plant a Church

By Carl Kuhl The No. 1 rule of church planting is dead wrong. This rule is repeated in books, at conferences, at boot camps, and everywhere you turn. I believe God has put thousands of people in places across this country and millions around the globe for the purpose of rising to the occasion of planting a church. However, there is one huge problem: they are told they can”t do it. The first rule in church planting is that you must be called. And the people who say this seem to have Scripture on their side. They tell of God”s

October 18, 2013

Christian Standard

Finding the Person Who Can Plant

By Justin Horey One of the most popular axioms in church planting is that new churches are the most effective means of reaching the lost. It is often the first defense given to the skeptic who questions the need for more new churches in North America. But among church planting leaders, another idea is just as prevalent: the most important factor in determining the success of a church is the church planter himself. Brent Foulke, mobilization executive at Stadia, puts it this way: “The single most indicative factor for a church plant”s survival and health is the capable leadership of

October 17, 2013

Christian Standard

Multisite Done Right

By Ed Stetzer Multisite appears to be the new big thing. Multisite churches have been regarded as the cure for all of the church”s ills, the most evil plague on the body of Christ, and everything in between. Opinions of multisite churches run rampant, but facts are often ignored in evaluating what has undoubtedly become the new normal for large and growing churches””and even for some small churches. The number of multisite churches is growing rapidly. In the 1950s, there were just a few. In 2012, there were more than 5,000 different churches with two or more geographic campuses. Sixty-two

October 15, 2013

Mark A. Taylor

Bringing People Together

By Mark A. Taylor “The power of the gospel to bring people together is greater than I thought,” Kevin Haah said in the September 26 Beyond the Standard BlogTalkRadio program. Haah”s New City Christian Church reaches the homeless in the church”s Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles as well as upwardly mobile young professionals with six-figure incomes. This is possible, he believes, “because we make the gospel the centerpiece.” “We”re all more messed up than we think we are, but God loves us more than we can imagine,” he said. “The gospel is the story of God coming to save

October 14, 2013

Christian Standard

Partnering to Plant in Calgary

By Rick Scruggs On May 7 we formalized a journey started 12 months earlier! Unlikely partners bound together by a document, motivated by a love for others, and captivated by a vision that requires we work together and pray for healthy offspring. Planting churches and getting married have some remarkable similarities! This wasn”t the first time Restoration churches in Calgary, Alberta, had attempted a network church plant. Our first plant started strong in 2007 but suffered an untimely demise because of a moral failure. It caused significant discouragement in the ranks. A follow-up effort in 2009 was impeded by an

October 13, 2013

Christian Standard

Big Dreams in Small Places

By Philip Claycomb Our first coaching appointment was a bit awkward. Greg Garcia picked me up at the airport in Houston and started driving to the community where he was starting his new church. Along the way I saw indicators of growing suburbs: construction, traffic, and new rooftops as far as the eye could see! This is a great place to start a church, I thought. But Greg kept driving out into the country””way out in the country! As we pulled into Needville, Texas, population 3,000, I asked myself, How do you tell someone he”s chasing the wrong dream? I

October 12, 2013

Christian Standard

Transforming Our Region

By Glen Elliott Pantano Christian Church exists in a city and region that is facing huge challenges. Over this past spring, there were four reports that captured my attention. We did not fare well in any of these reports. According to Barna Group research, Tucson, Arizona, is the 17th least Bible-minded city, the 11th most unchurched city, and the 12th most post-Christian city. Finally, we are the sixth-poorest city in the nation. We have a community that is far from God and struggling, and that is not OK with God. It must not be OK with the church either. How

October 11, 2013

Christian Standard

What I Want to Tell Church Planters

By Aaron Brockett Six months after the grand opening of our church plant, I hit a wall. The combination of seeing the last of the “well-wishers” depart, watching our first disillusioned family leave the church, and experiencing the drought of summer attendance was too much. I”d given everything I had to get this young church started, and now the needle of my emotional tank was firmly planted on empty. I wanted to bail. To be honest, I was irritated with the stories of church planters turned megachurch pastors who made it look so easy (or so I thought). On paper,

October 10, 2013

Christian Standard

What I Want to Tell Large Churches

By Steve Wyatt Church planters are quirky and extremely headstrong, loner types who plow into most every “church” conversation with a Mighty Mouse mind-set (“Here I come to save the day!”) They tend to have an overdeveloped sense for “the way things ought to be” and confidence they can make it happen. At least that”s the case before launch day. I can make such seemingly harsh statements because I am a church planter. Church planters, as a tribe, are seriously impaired. Consider Exhibit A: we viciously trash the current church “model”””especially megachurches””but then build our “new and improved” model by

October 7, 2013

Christian Standard

What Would Jabez Do?

By Jim Tune   “Let me not live,” quoth he, “After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses All but new things disdain; whose judgments are Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies Expire before their fashions.” “”William Shakespeare, All”s Well That Ends Well   In business marketing, companies are very interested in reaching the elusive consumer known as the early adopter. I suppose I fit into that category. My guess is a large majority of church planters are early adopters, or perhaps even innovators. It wouldn”t surprise me if someone discovered the

October 5, 2013

Christian Standard

Educating Ministers as They Serve

By Jennifer Johnson “Old methods of seminary training assume an outdated model that”s primarily baptizing, marrying, and burying,” says Mark Love, dean of the School of Theology and Ministry at Rochester College (Rochester Hills, MI). “But we don”t live in that world anymore. We need to be teaching students how to read a culture and relate to it as missionaries.” To this end, Love created the Master of Religious Education in Missional Leadership, a two-year, 36-hour program designed to educate students while they serve in a local ministry. “Their ministry context is their primary classroom,” Love says. “So we combine

September 30, 2013

Christian Standard

Who Will Sing to George?

By Vangie Rodenbeck As the designated facilitator of this networking lunch, I sought to engage each member at the table in the discussion. The topic was special needs ministry, and the specific issue of discussion was how to “name” a ministry to such persons. These ministers were asking questions like: What do we call this ministry? Should we use the term “handicapped” or “disabled?” If we use language like “persons with different abilities,” will people understand what this ministry is about? But one man at the table sat quietly as the conversation whirled around him. Soon there was a lull

Help Keep Christian Standard Free & Accessible with a Tax Deductible Donation

We can do more together!

Every gift makes a difference!

No, thank you.
100% secure transactions - receipts provided.
Does Your Church Want to Support Christian Standard?

Would your church consider including support for Christian Standard in its annual missions budget? Your support would help us not only continue the 160-year legacy of this unifying ministry, but also expand the free resources, cooperative opportunities, and practical guidance we provide to strengthen churches in the U.S. and around the world.

We can do more together!

Every gift makes a difference!

No, thank you.
100% secure transactions - receipts provided.
Secret Link