Articles for tag: Warren Bird

August 11, 2018

Kent E. Fillinger

Kent E. Fillinger

Does Your Church’s Worship Style Matter?

By Kent E. Fillinger Worship music is a key part of a church’s overall worship experience, and a church’s style of worship remains a key differentiator, even as the “worship wars” of the 1980s and 1990s have subsided. Research shows that worship or music isn’t a priority for people in choosing to attend a church or in deciding whether to remain at a church (see my article “What Are Your Church’s Push and Pull Factors? Part 2” from March). Still, music remains one of the most talked about elements of a worship service. I wanted to learn more about worship

July 25, 2018

Christian Standard

Storm Blows Roof Off Church in Tennessee (Plus News Briefs)

By Jim Nieman A storm that rolled through eastern Tennessee late Friday night tore the roof off of part of Love Chapel Christian Church in Erwin, leaving tons of debris and causing extensive water damage. No one was hurt. The integrity of the original 1953 church structure is still being assessed, senior minister Robert Bess said Tuesday, but an adjoining, 1960s-era, rectangular addition that includes classrooms, a nursery, restrooms, and an office is a total loss. In all likelihood, the church will need to relocate for a period of months while repairs are made and new construction occurs, said Bess,

June 10, 2018

Kent E. Fillinger

Kent E. Fillinger

Monthly Attendance: The New Norm?

By Kent E. Fillinger “Is monthly attendance the new norm?” asked the headline of a recent article by Warren Bird, director of research at Leadership Network. The trend for several years is that regular churchgoers attend less frequently. Bird said his research shows the typical church reaches 1.8 times its average weekly attendance in a month. He said the average doesn’t change much regardless of the size of the church, age of the church, or age of the lead pastor. Therefore, a typical church can determine how many different people attend each month by multiplying the average weekend worship attendance

May 27, 2018

Christian Standard

From Hero to Hero Maker: A Game Changer for the Church

By David Dummitt In February I attended the Exponential conference in Orlando. It was a great week of connecting with other church leaders and church planters from all over the world. This year’s conference theme was “Hero Maker,” based on Dave Ferguson and Warren Bird’s new book by the same name. I had the opportunity to facilitate workshops alongside of Dave, Warren, and others as we talked about a shift in practices that we as leaders must make in order to carry out the Great Commission: moving from being heroes to being hero makers. This message is a game changer

January 27, 2017

Christian Standard

How Residencies Prepare Emerging Church Leaders

By Dave Ferguson and Warren Bird How and why residencies have become standard operating practice for all of NewThing”s new church planters. When you think about a residency program, you might envision doctors in training, honing their craft under the tutelage of seasoned physicians. For NewThing (www.newthing.org, an international church-planting network birthed out of the Chicago-based Community Christian Church, www.communitychristian.org), a 9- to 12-month residency is required for any emerging leader who wants to start a church in NewThing”s network. It”s standard operating procedure for all of their new church planters. “For us, residency is the chute before you launch

May 7, 2016

Christian Standard

Everybody Leaves Sooner or Later

An Interview with Warren Bird, coauthor of Next: Pastoral Succession that Works By Kent Fillinger What are the key points from Next? The first is the sobering reminder that we”re all interims. A reality of life is that whatever our role is, someone is going to come after us unless Jesus comes back before then. We try to unfold that in the book. And there”s a theology behind that. Jesus had a succession plan, so shouldn”t you? Moses had a succession plan. And look at how, from Moses to Joshua, it worked so well. But Joshua didn”t have a successor, and

October 2, 2015

Christian Standard

Tour of Duties

By Jennifer Johnson Recently, two older ladies in our church began taking Communion to members in the hospital. While this is far from the 24-hour, professionally trained chaplaincy program organized by First Christian Church in Decatur (see related article), for Miss Marilyn and Miss Pat it was a Bigfoot-sized step out of their comfort zones. “I was scared to death,” Pat said the Sunday after her first hospital visit. But she did it, gathering up the portable Communion set and her car keys and setting out on a faith adventure. Now she and Marilyn are old pros, sometimes scheduling their

July 11, 2015

Christian Standard

Better Together

By Jennifer Johnson More than 4,000 churches close every year, many because their dwindling attendance can”t support a senior minister or the rising costs of aging buildings. While simply closing their doors may be the best option for some, Creswell Christian Church made a different decision, choosing instead to initiate a merger with Mountain Christian Church.  Today the majority of Creswell”s families are enthusiastic Mountain members, working together to honor the past and build for the future in new ways that neither could have accomplished alone. This article tells how that happened. Creswell Christian Church a 55-year-old congregation in Bel

June 24, 2014

Mark A. Taylor

Size May Not Matter

By Mark A. Taylor We”ve been chronicling megachurch success for more than three decades at CHRISTIAN STANDARD. But in spite of encouraging growth, both in size and number of megachurches, an underbelly of suspicion toward them remains. Our Beyond the Standard conversation May 15 with Jud Wilhite, Dave Stone, and Don Wilson, showed this. These ministers with the three largest megachurches among the independent Christian churches shared practical ideas and thoughtful strategies””always with a spirit of humility. But too many questions from listeners contained veiled accusations of compromise to achieve numbers. So when I came across a report from Leadership

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