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Vibrant Faith Articles

Vibrant Faith's writing team of certified coaches, ministry leaders, and researchers publishes three times a week on leadership development, coaching for ministry leaders, and applied ministry research.

Vibrant Faith Leadership - Articles

Becoming a Church They Don’t Want to Leave

  I’m telling this story backwards. Stay with me… I’m moving. Again. People who know me are laughing. When we bought our condo three years ago I declared: “This is it, we’re home. I’m never moving again.” Now this will be the sixth time my husband and I have moved

Read More »

How to Prompt a Story-Sharing Environment

  With church partners in our Fourth-Soil Parenting Project, we’re experimenting with new ways to plant and nurture a story-sharing environment in congregations. Why? Because discipleship and faith formation are profoundly hindered when people have not yet explored, acknowledged, and witnessed to their own story. As more people in your

Read More »

The ‘Belonging’ Magnet

  As ministry leaders, it’s wise to consider the young people of Gen Z the church’s “canaries in the coal mine.” Young people are driving the steep decline in church participation in our culture. But rather than treating their exodus as a problem to solve, what if we paid attention

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Revitalizing Lent – Mid-Stream

A few weeks ago I was in a staff-meeting discussion about our Lenten ministry plans. After a pregnant pause, we looked at each other and someone said, “Last year went well, let’s just do the same thing.” We let out a collective sigh of relief and Lent, once again, became

Read More »
broken and needy

How to Invite the Broken and Needy into Community

  The mission of the church is to invite the broken and needy into a healing community, where they can find or deepen their relationship with Jesus and experience restoration in all aspects of their life. And so, as the pandemic set in, I helped launch a new online class

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performative formation

The Antidote to Performative Formation

  In my upcoming book Editing Jesus I tackle the forming influence of social media in our culture, and how the dynamics of the medium have (for many) created a performative momentum in us. Of course, this momentum has infected the people in our congregations in profound ways and even

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Jay-z

The Importance of Jay-Z’s Grammy Message

By Fred Oduyoye and Rick Lawrence On Grammy Awards night a couple of weeks ago, iconic hip-hop pioneer, producer, and activist Jay-Z was honored with the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award. He brought his teenage daughter Blue Ivy with him on stage, as “emotional support.” And then he called out

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transformational worship

Toward a More Transformational Worship Experience

If you’ve been involved in ministry leadership for more than a year (and that includes almost all of us), you know that weekly worship-service planning can devolve into a mundane, lifeless routine. The struggle is real—I’ve been there for the past four decades. So let’s break free from the shackles

Read More »

The Marriage Boost

  Marriage, it turns out, is a primary catalyst for human flourishing. And Christian marriages that value regular church attendance offer a clear bulwark against divorce… According to a new Gallup study and Get Married, the much-talked-about new book from Dr. Brad Wilcox (professor of sociology and director of the

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Faith Formation - Articles

Becoming a Church They Don’t Want to Leave

  I’m telling this story backwards. Stay with me… I’m moving. Again. People who know me are laughing. When we bought our condo three years ago I declared: “This is it, we’re home. I’m never moving again.” Now this will be the sixth time my husband and I have moved

Read More »

How to Prompt a Story-Sharing Environment

  With church partners in our Fourth-Soil Parenting Project, we’re experimenting with new ways to plant and nurture a story-sharing environment in congregations. Why? Because discipleship and faith formation are profoundly hindered when people have not yet explored, acknowledged, and witnessed to their own story. As more people in your

Read More »

Revitalizing Lent – Mid-Stream

A few weeks ago I was in a staff-meeting discussion about our Lenten ministry plans. After a pregnant pause, we looked at each other and someone said, “Last year went well, let’s just do the same thing.” We let out a collective sigh of relief and Lent, once again, became

Read More »
broken and needy

How to Invite the Broken and Needy into Community

  The mission of the church is to invite the broken and needy into a healing community, where they can find or deepen their relationship with Jesus and experience restoration in all aspects of their life. And so, as the pandemic set in, I helped launch a new online class

Read More »
transformational worship

Toward a More Transformational Worship Experience

If you’ve been involved in ministry leadership for more than a year (and that includes almost all of us), you know that weekly worship-service planning can devolve into a mundane, lifeless routine. The struggle is real—I’ve been there for the past four decades. So let’s break free from the shackles

Read More »

What We’re Learning: Parents’ Unique Spiritual Longings

  Parenting tips, strategies, and philosophies are well-resourced in our culture—through books, seminars, social media, and online resources. And in the contemporary church we’ve always been focused on the needs, developmental pathways, and spiritual formation of children. But, in many ways, we are just waking up to the needs, developmental

Read More »
church communication

(Un)Check the Bulletin- Reimaging Church Communication

“For more information, please check the bulletin…” How many times have you heard that instruction at church? More important, how many people never hear it, or are tone-deaf to it? Church Communication should move from impersonal to personal Many churches still rely on traditional bulletins and emails to communicate to

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Life Is the Curriculum

When you think about the families in your congregation, what do you hope they can become? If you consider their “floor,” what is their “ceiling”? Consider the curious case of “Bandit and Chilli Heeler” (above), the dog-parents on the international hit kids show Bluey. Their floor is already the ceiling

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unsung heroes

What We’re Learning: 3 Unsung Heroes

  The old saying goes: “The church is always one generation away from extinction.”   Typically, we use that sort of “fear leverage” to double-down on attractional ministries for children and youth. I’ve heard ministry leaders use the “one generation” mantra to argue for the importance of church/parachurch-based ministries. But I’ve never

Read More »

Vibrant Faith Coaching - Articles

Becoming a Church They Don’t Want to Leave

  I’m telling this story backwards. Stay with me… I’m moving. Again. People who know me are laughing. When we bought our condo three years ago I declared: “This is it, we’re home. I’m never moving again.” Now this will be the sixth time my husband and I have moved

Read More »

How to Prompt a Story-Sharing Environment

  With church partners in our Fourth-Soil Parenting Project, we’re experimenting with new ways to plant and nurture a story-sharing environment in congregations. Why? Because discipleship and faith formation are profoundly hindered when people have not yet explored, acknowledged, and witnessed to their own story. As more people in your

Read More »
transformational worship

Toward a More Transformational Worship Experience

If you’ve been involved in ministry leadership for more than a year (and that includes almost all of us), you know that weekly worship-service planning can devolve into a mundane, lifeless routine. The struggle is real—I’ve been there for the past four decades. So let’s break free from the shackles

Read More »
church communication

(Un)Check the Bulletin- Reimaging Church Communication

“For more information, please check the bulletin…” How many times have you heard that instruction at church? More important, how many people never hear it, or are tone-deaf to it? Church Communication should move from impersonal to personal Many churches still rely on traditional bulletins and emails to communicate to

Read More »

Why Listening Is Our First Priority

  In our research work with churches across the country, we’ve “discovered” an obvious truth all over again—listening to people is a crucial spiritual discipline.  In our Fourth-Soil Parenting Project, an expedition into fueling parent’s spiritual impact in their kids’ lives, we asked our 20 participating churches to launch this

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Where Are Our Children?

How is the mission of the church, first handed to us by Jesus, defining and shaping our ministries? For example, the people who are showing up shape our missional focus—but what about the people who are not showing up? The absence of certain people, and the reasons behind their absence,

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Celebrating Wins

The world has a dwindling natural resource that’s been overlooked—it’s the skill of appreciation. You’ve probably noticed the difference in yourself when you’re around a leader who habitually appreciates the “wins” on your team, not merely camps on the “fixes.” New York Times columnist David Brooks, author of How to Know

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How to Respond When a Relationship is Tested

f the culture we live in is the pond we swim in, some of the streams feeding into our pond carry toxins that pollute the water. These are relational toxins like betrayal, broken trust, wrong assumptions, and embedded lies. Sometimes these toxins are undetectable until we feel the impact of

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The Weary Ones Rejoicing

A kind of sacred joy has always accompanied my celebration of Advent. But this year, as I prepared for our Advent journey, I carried a heavy weight in my soul. So much in the world is unsettled and disturbing. The war in Ukraine and now in Gaza marks, again, the

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Vibrant Faith Research - Articles

What We’re Learning: Parents’ Unique Spiritual Longings

  Parenting tips, strategies, and philosophies are well-resourced in our culture—through books, seminars, social media, and online resources. And in the contemporary church we’ve always been focused on the needs, developmental pathways, and spiritual formation of children. But, in many ways, we are just waking up to the needs, developmental

Read More »
unsung heroes

What We’re Learning: 3 Unsung Heroes

  The old saying goes: “The church is always one generation away from extinction.”   Typically, we use that sort of “fear leverage” to double-down on attractional ministries for children and youth. I’ve heard ministry leaders use the “one generation” mantra to argue for the importance of church/parachurch-based ministries. But I’ve never

Read More »

The Programification of the Church

I know, “program-ification” is not a real word. One of our Vibrant Faith Coaches, the Rev. Erik Samuelson, made that up. On our team, we all like it. And we know that you know what we mean when we say it.  We’re curious—has Christian faith formation been mixed up with

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What We’re Learning: But They Don’t Have Time…

When we gather with other ministry leaders, the conversations inevitably gravitate toward a common complaint—we disapprove of the way most parents allocate their time as a family. We’re frustrated by what parents prioritize over attendance at church or church programing.   With our 4th-Soil Parenting Project, Vibrant Faith is helping

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What We’re Learning: Setting Unrealistic Expectations

(EDITOR’S NOTE: At Vibrant Faith we’ve partnered with our team of ministry leadership coaches to name the obstacles and challenges the church has put in the way of a FAMILYING approach to the formation of faith. Check out a previous blog that sets the stage for this conversation with Obstacle

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Wrong Assumptions about Parents

Ministry leaders generally agree that parents matter most for the formation of faith in their children, but nevertheless have multiple long-standing objections to this notion. These objections most often show up in the way leaders resist shifting their faith-forming paradigm from the church to the home. And, unconsciously, these objections

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Obstacles of Forming Faith: What We’re Learning

It’s maybe the oldest “shop talk” topic in ministry—Why can’t or won’t parents take responsibility for forming faith in their children?  And, always threaded into this conversation, our common conclusion—This is why church and parachurch ministry leaders simply have to step in and teach the next generation of children and

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The Truth About Our Obstacles

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard an important truism more than once, so maybe that’s a nudge to sit up and pay attention… We have to name the truth about our obstacles before we can overcome them. Naming the truth about our lives is just as important for

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Connecting with Parents

As we begin the process of accompanying churches as they focus on and nurture the faith lives of parents through our 4th Soil Parenting Project funded by The Lilly Endowment, we will be reflecting here on our discoveries and challenges and hoping we can share those with you even as they

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