Latest posts

Multi-Site: 6 Best Practices for a Campus Visit

If you serve in a central role in a multi-site context, you are going to make campus visits. Or at least you should be making campus visits. You should strive to be a church hopper....

Brian is AT&T. AT&T is Brian.

I mentioned in a recent post that earlier this summer I traveled out of country. As a part of that process, I had a primary and secondary plan for being able to use my phone...

Top Ten Quotes: Reset

It’s no secret that I’m a long-time fan of Chip and Dan Heath’s writing. I’ve talked before about Made to Stick, Switch, The Power of Moments, and Upstream, among others. Their books are one of...

Lost in Translation

Earlier this summer my wife and I – along with our 14 year old daughter – had the opportunity to visit a couple of long-time friends in Germany. They serve with a local seminary and...

How to Get Past the Well-Oiled Machine

This is the next installment in our ongoing “Large Church” series, which looks at guest services through the lens of the larger congregation: those with an average attendance of 800 or more. See the entire...

Q&A: Why Don’t You Have a Coffee Bar?

Q: It doesn’t appear that The Summit serves coffee or donuts on Sunday mornings. What’s the theory behind that? [from a recent Confab session] A: It’s true that we zigged when a lot of churches...

Multi-Site: How Many Staff Should You Hire for a New Campus?

Q: Can you talk about what staff roles we should launch with at a new campus? Does this change when you go from portable to permanent location? [Question submitted in a recent Confab gathering] A:...

If We Don’t Equip Them, Someone Else Will.

The #1 rule of leaders-sitting-around-a-table-drinking-coffee is that as some point, you have to talk about volunteers: how few you have, how you don’t have the right ones, or how that one guy named Bill is...

Danny Recommends: Folding Hand Truck

Every so often we dip our toes into a series called Danny Recommends:, posts that tip you off to the stuff that I…you know. The recommendations might be products for use in your ministry, resources that will...

Q&A: Moving from Consumer to Participant?

Q: A ministry like Guest Services seems to enable a consumer culture within our church. How can we move people from consumer to participant? [From a recent One-Day Workshop] A: Let’s be clear: there’s nothing...