Thom S. Rainer

Latest

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  May 4, 2013

  Four Ways to Improve the Worship Leader–Pastor Relationship

  Worship leader: your pastor is the single most important professional relationship you have. You may be the primary facilitator of music and media, but he's ultimately in charge—and he's usually the one taking the fallout when things go awry. You absolutely want a healthy, dynamic relationship with your pastor.

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  Apr 27, 2013

  Can a Dying Church Find Life? Six Radical Steps to 'Yes'

  I must say from a pure statistical perspective, most churches with the symptoms I noted will die within a matter of a few years. Though I don't have hard data, I would be comfortable suggesting that the percentage exceeds 99 percent. In the midst of the gloomy news of terminal churches, I took a look at a few churches that had all the signs of impending death and then turned around to life.

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  Apr 20, 2013

  Four Simple Reasons Most Churches Aren't Breakout Churches

  Almost a decade ago, I led a major study on churches that had reversed negative trends and become positive breakout churches. I established the criterion that the breakout had to take place without changing pastors. I knew from previous research that most breakout churches had new pastors. I wanted to see if it was likely for a church to turnaround without getting a new pastor.

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  Apr 16, 2013

  Eight Most Frequent Preaching Distractions

  Preachers are also too familiar with distractions. While it's the way of life of someone who gets in front of people to speak, it is no less annoying. I asked a number of pastors to share with me the most frequent distractions they experience while preaching. Here are there responses in order of frequency. I also took a representative quote from one of the respondents for each item.

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  Apr 15, 2013

  Six Critical Issues to Prevent Church Members from Dropping Out

  The first "test" consists of three questions. Though the church member may not ask these questions specifically, he or she is evaluating three critical issues to determine if it's time to move or stay. These are the issues around the six-month point.

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  Apr 13, 2013

  Six Critical Issues to Prevent Church Members From Dropping Out

  Of all the members who drop out of church, 82 percent leave in the first year of their membership. Retention efforts are thus critical in the first twelve months after a member joins a church.

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  Apr 12, 2013

  Seven Distinguishing Characteristics of Unified Churches

  The exercise was simple. I made a list of over 30 of the most unified churches I know. Some of them have been my clients in the past. I then made a list of over 40 fragmented churches (they were easier to find). From that point I began to answer my own questions: What makes this church look like it's unified? What makes this other church look like it's fragmented?

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  Apr 6, 2013

  Seven Things Pastors' Wives Wish They Had Been Told Before They Became Pastors' Wives

  I am especially grateful to have the opportunity to hear from pastors' wives since much of my focus is on pastors. Our recent, informal survey simply asked the open-ended question: "What do you wish you had been told before you became a minister's wife?"

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  Mar 30, 2013

  Ten Commandments for Guest-Friendly Church Members

  I travel a lot and spend a lot of time in different churches. I have had a church consulting firm that did "guest" visits as part of our services. Sadly, many times I do not feel welcome as a guest when I visit churches.

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  Mar 27, 2013

  The 15 Largest Protestant Denominations in the United States

  The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches assembles various data on churches and denominations across North America. I recently gleaned the top 15 denominations by membership in the United States from their reports: