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 […]
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My 31st Birthday
Today is the day. I’m 31. I suppose that makes me in my early 30s. Any advice on this decade?
As far as congregations go: Vital > Viable > Inviable I would much rather lead and be part of a vital congregation than one that is simply viable. I would much rather lead and be part of a viable congregation than one that is inviable and has not yet closed. I believe that one of […]
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 […]
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Do You Info Snack?
I sure do. I recently heard this phrase and found it to pretty accurately describe my habit of using my iPhone to check news, play a game or read email while having down time of even a minute or two. Do you info snack?
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Two Realities about Jobs
I had a great conversation with a colleague a couple weeks ago about the reality of jobs. Here is what he had to say: When considerino possibile roles or commitments, play to your passions and don’t apologize for it. There will always be a part of every job that you hate. What would you add […]
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2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many […]
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 […]
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Columbus Day 2011
Columbus Day, Columbus Day. Each year the United States, along with other countries in the Western Hemisphere commemorate the landing of Christopher Columbus in the “New World.” There is much that could be said about the legacy that Columbus left, but instead of diving in to what could be a quagmire, I’ll ask instead: How […]
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 […]
Rev. Andrew Conard 