Thom Rainer

As I examined the data and traits of healthy churches, I saw twelve recurring themes.

It is cliché to say the landscape of church ministry has changed in the past five years, but it is most definitely true.

Do you remember the excitement when the data began to point to a waning of COVID? And then the second big wave of COVID came and churches are in the middle of this challenge.

Pastors of twenty years ago had to deal with the occasional anonymous hate mail, but today, pastors can get hit daily with negative social media posts.

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The early days of social media were often informational, relational, and familial. Now many of the posts are verbal warfare. What, then, should Christian leaders do?

Designated giving can be an incredible blessing for your church. It allows, for example, church members to give to such areas of passion as missions or facilities. But far too many churches are handling designated giving in ways that can get them in trouble.

It was a celebration. It was a great occasion. But it was also exhausting. What do you do now?

We really don’t need to miss the unfolding trends of small groups. While the regathering of in-person worship services rightly has our attention, we must also focus on small groups in churches.

Many areas are seeing a COVID spike a second time, some even greater than the first spike. The most common responses included establishing digital worship services and digital small groups. This time, the responses are different.

In that light, I asked pastors a simple question on social media: “What are your prayers for your church for 2021?” I received hundreds of responses, but the answers were amazingly consistent. Here are the top seven prayers in order of frequency:

For certain, there are many of us looking forward to leaving 2020 behind and entering a new year. We anticipate that 2021 will be much better. Indeed, we have every reason to believe it will be a better year.

Adoption is one family bringing another family member into the household of faith. Fostering refers to a healthier church helping a less healthy church for a season.

One of the most common challenges we are hearing from church leaders is the unexpected loss of volunteers. It is always a challenge to get and keep volunteers.

I can only imagine how we would have responded in 2019 if someone had told us we needed to be prepared not to gather in-person in worship services for several months in 2020. Indeed, if we had been given a glimpse of this crazy year ahead of time, we would have thought the world had gone crazy.

It is one of the most common questions we get from church leaders: When will all the church members return to in-persons services? Leaders do not like my response: Never. It is a reality church leaders and members are hesitant to accept.