We communicated in a lot of ways. There wasn't a lot of coordination among all of the media. A shotgun approach evolved as pieces were added over the history of the church. We were using: Newsletter – Our weekly newsletter, The Story, has been mailed for 52 years. Newsletters mainly included event information, but also had a pastor's letter, prayer …

Over the past several months we've been making some substantial changes in the way we communicate as a church. Last summer we did a fairly extensive review of all the media we were using and the effectiveness of each medium. What we discovered was fairly concerning. We felt like we had been communicating effectively, but people kept telling us they …

I can hardly believe it's time for Innovate again this year. It seems like not that long ago that I had my first experience at GCC last fall. This year finds me in a very different role than I was last year and I'm having trouble picking sessions, workshops, etc. I really want to go to those that focus on …

Classes have been in session at Missouri State for about three weeks now and we're in full swing with our college ministry. It's been an eye opening experience to go through the process of discernment, vision casting, planning, and launching a new worship location. We wrapped up our first series on Sunday, a discussion about key relationships called My Circle. …

I've spent the last two days attending the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. It's a great event most every year. Usually there is at least one session that really makes me think, challenges my assumptions, causes me to pray more, and leads to reevaluating how and why we do ministry in the local church. Willow almost always puts together a great …

Last night we had our summer worship kickoff. Overall I think the night went really well. We're using OnePrayer materials for the summer using four of the messages, small group materials, etc. The prep leading up to the worship was a bit more chaotic than I would have liked. Honestly, it was a lot more chaotic than I would have …

This spring has been a blur so far. I dont' know that I've ever been busier. I think it's a combination of my classwork, expanding the college ministry, and general life insanity. Most people keep up with what I'm doing on twitter, but I'm going to try shorter, more frequent blog postings as well (how many times have I said …

I'll be appointed at Schweitzer as an associate pastor next conference year. I just got done in a meeting with our Staff Parish Relations Committee with our District Superintendent. It's been a long process, but it's now public that the intent of the Bishop and the Cabinet is to appoint me here. I can't imagine serving on a better team.

I'd promised this post last week but never got around to writing it. It's been incredibly busy these last few weeks as those of you who follow my twitter probably know. It's really an exciting time to be in ministry at Schweitzer for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons is our new college ministry. We started the college …

We had the first runthrough for the Green Room (our college worship) at Missouri State this weekend. I'm incredibly excited about moving our college worship to the campus, but man is portable church a lot of work. We held the group to the core leadership team (about a dozen people), met at the church at 1:30, and headed to the …