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

So Long, Farewell!

A long time ago, I decided to live my life with Jesus by jumping into mud puddles instead of over them. A mud puddle, in my own strange vernacular, is anything Jesus said or did that we typically ignore, avoid, struggle to understand, or forget. The story of the Canaanite

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The Good Thief

My friend and longtime pastor Tom Melton once shared with me a sweet memory from his early parenting. As a young father he carried his toddler son into a swimming pool for the first time. As the water crept up around them, his son clung to him more desperately. And

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We’re Not Called to Love People

I know… it’s a provocative title for this piece. Let me explain… Years ago I gave my wife, Bev, an eyebrow-raising birthday gift. I secretly paid the registration fee for something our health club calls “Booty Camp,” then surprised her with it. Booty Camp is a female-only, military-style morning workout

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Thanks-Giving

I’ve been a Christian for about 45 years now. That means I’ve been reading the Bible for a very long time. But the older I get, the more the Bible’s “onion layers” are peeled away—I find deeper meaning in what I’m reading as my relationship with Jesus deepens. It’s like

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Bold Post-Election Reconciling

  By Fred Oduyoye and Rick Lawrence Welcome to our post-election reality—the immersive division and polarization of our culture, our cities, and our neighborhoods continues. Already-strained relationships now have new news to swallow and wallow in. And all of us face new challenges as we follow Jesus into “love your

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Curing Our Home-Blindness

  I was standing in the checkout lane at our neighborhood grocery store, waiting to pay while the checker scanned the things in my cart. She’d greeted me with a disinterested “hello,” but then turned to the bagger next to her to talk. And what she talked about, openly, was

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20 Pastor Appreciations

We live in a culture rife with undermined trust… Politicians, public servants, business professionals, and pastors are distrusted at record levels. The pillars of ethical confidence that undergird a functioning society are disintegrating. In the latest Gallup Poll measuring the public’s ethical ratings for 23 professions, less than a third

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Questions & Answers Fueling Our Impact on Young People

At a large gathering for organizations (including Vibrant Faith) that are involved in a Lilly Endowment project called Thriving Congregations, I led a breakout session for ministry leaders interested in reaching young people. Around the table were eight leaders from diverse organizations, all of them wrestling with the challenges brought

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Faith Formation - Articles

Creating Unforgettable Family Summer Memories

Summer is the sound of crackling campfire, the smell of a fresh-cut lawn, the taste of fresh watermelon, and the feel of a frisbee caught in a park—all under a sunny blue sky. It’s the perfect time for families to go all-in on engaging each other, and the perfect time

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The Forming of Peculiar People

Think of a cultural environment very familiar to you that is not your home—your church, workplace, health club, volunteer organization, or social group. Now consider these questions: What are the values of that culture? What are the priorities? What do you like and not like about it? In what ways

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We Are Storytellers – So Let’s Tell Our Stories

On a shelf filled with memorabilia was a box labeled “photos.” The box sat collecting dust for years, untouched until the death of my sister, Kim. We opened it to fill a memory board for the funeral, and to use some photos for the memorial slide show. So many questions

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Losing Our Chaff

  In a BBC Earth nature documentary, cameras follow a pair of hornbills (tropical birds) as they carry out a strange and inspiring mission. We watch as the “husband/wife” team preps for an upcoming brood of hatchlings. Together, they find a tree with a hollowed-out opening. The female climbs inside

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The De-Fanging of Jesus

Jesus often said things we don’t think He should’ve said—a case in point: “I came not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Is this the same Jesus we call “the prince of peace”? The same one who promised His disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I

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Flipping the Script

 Recent research reveals that 40 million Americans who used to go to church no longer do… These are the “nones”—people who are disaffiliating, deconstructing, reconstructing, and de-churching. People who once included churchgoing as a normal part of life, but no longer do. For the first time, in the eight decades that Gallup

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What If ‘Too Busy’ Wasn’t the Standard?

You know the drill—especially before, during and after busy ministry seasons… “How are you doing?”someone asks. “Surviving,” you reply. “Juggling too much of everything!” That’s typically true and feels “correct.” But imagine if, instead, you replied: “I’m great! Fully rested.” Ever heard that kind of reply from your boss or

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Vibrant Faith Research - Articles

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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Surviving Isn’t Thriving

There’s no question that our post-pandemic church life is different… We have shifted yet again, and not toward consistent church attendance or support of faith-formation programs for children.   While we need to take a deep dive into our current cultural reality, the research work fueling our Thriving Congregations grant

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Thriving Grows Out Of Our Uniqueness

We have just come to a new realization in our Thriving Congregations Project. Because of it, we moved our 27 Thriving Congregations churches from cohort coaching to individual coaching for our last year of work together. We did this because we’re embracing a new aspect of what it means to

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5 New-World Keys from Moses

To put an exclamation point on this series of posts related to our new 4th Soil Parenting Initiative, here’s a reflection that I wrote a few years ago.  It strikes me as even more timely today… There they were—millions of them camped on the edge of the promised land.  Moses

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Vibrant Faith Coaching - Articles

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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What is the Way for Your Church?

Business executives from around the world pay big bucks to attend seminars on “the Disney Way”—learning how leaders at this much-admired company build their culture, leverage business success, and treat their employees and guests. For a long time, the tech company Hewlett Packard has been known for its egalitarian, decentralized

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The Way Of Your Church

Business executives from around the world pay big bucks to attend seminars on “the Disney Way”—learning how leaders at this much-admired company build their culture, leverage business success, and treat their employees and guests. For a long time, the tech company Hewlett Packard has been known for its egalitarian, decentralized

Read More »

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

Read More »

What Happens When We Stop Saying Yes

View Post Are you like most ministry leaders—struggling with a tendency to say “yes” to everything? Yes to helping someone on our “off” hours (whatever that means), yes to helping out in another volunteer role, yes to an additional responsibilities, yes to another project? Our plate is often so full

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