I have had the privilege of spending time with Ray Pitman, a member of Resurrection, over the past several months. Several years ago, I officiated at the funeral for his wife, Betty, and we reconnected this summer when I lead worship at Leawood one Saturday night. I found his perspective on capacity to be particularly […]
Category: ministry
I have had the privilege of spending time with Ray Pitman, a member of Resurrection, over the past several months. Several years ago, I officiated at the funeral for his wife, Betty, and we reconnected this summer when I lead worship at Leawood one Saturday night. He has shared with me over and over his […]
I have had the privilege of spending time with Ray Pitman, a member of Resurrection, over the past several months. Several years ago, I officiated at the funeral for his wife, Betty, and we reconnected this summer when I lead worship at Leawood one Saturday night. Last Friday he invited me to hear him speak […]
Last week my son and I met Nicole for lunch at Chick-fil-A. This is a restaurant that has hospitality down pat and from which the church could draw helpful lessons. I have come to expect this when I go there to eat, but this time I had a surprise. We had ordered a Kid’s Meal […]
At our last district clergy meeting our District Superintendent was speaking about metrics and vital churches and wanted to make one thing clear: Numbers are not vitality. Numbers are contextual. This is so true. Numbers give us insight but they are not vitality. I found a similar thought expressed on Twitter recently Growth ≠ The […]
Clearly numbers do not tell the whole story of a local church, annual conference or denomination. There are stories of life change that are more important than raw data. One of the challenges of collecting stories is how to report them. It is far easier to look at a graph of worship attendance at our […]
Several weeks ago, I wrote a series about Why Numbers Matter in the UMC and I wanted to follow that up with some thoughts that I have been percolating on since then. Statistically, for metrics to be any good they need to be measuring the same thing across time and among different locations. I don’t […]
There are many blessings of being in ministry serving as a pastor at a local church. One of these is the chance to teach classes about knowing, loving and serving God. This week I finished the second of a six week class in which we are looking at how we respond to God’s love and […]
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Blessings of Ministry – Mission (2 of 3)
There are many blessings of being in ministry as the pastor of a local church. One of these blessings is the opportunity to lead our congregation in mission to the community. In my role at Resurrection West, I have the opportunity to work with a great team of volunteers on the Mission team that organizes […]
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Blessings of Ministry – Babies (1 of 3)
There are many blessings of ministry as a pastor. One of those is to be with families with new babies. In the past several weeks, I have had the opportunity to be with two families who welcomed a new member to their family, as well as pray before surgery for an infant. Each one of […]
Yesterday, I led a workshop at Leadership Institute – Worship Online: What We’ve Learned in Three Years. Having transitioned my job responsibility to serve as Associate Pastor at Resurrection West on August 15, this was my final official role with Resurrection Online. You can see the presentation here: I felt great about the presentation. I […]
I was fascinated the version of All Creatures of Our God and King from the Elevation Church worship team. This video has prompted some response in the blogosphere, including: Worship vs. Performance Citizenship Confusion: Auto-tuned Elevation Church I find myself back and forth between the perspectives outlined in the two posts above. I would be […]
Rev. Andrew Conard 