I’m on church staff. I do churchy duties throughout the week. I promise. But if this post gets out, I might lose my job. What exactly are these churchy duties? It’s pretty sad… Most church members might be a little suspicious of some chump that just stands in front of people on Sundays and sings, occasionally waving his arms for the choir. “Anyone can do that,” they might think. “We’re paying this guy a living wage? For THAT?!” Yep. “What’s he do the REST of the week?!” Not much, actually. Here are 8 things I do throughout the week–on
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The only experience I have is my own. If you use other tools more effectively, I applaud you. Keep it up. In my experience, a spreadsheet is the most efficient tool for tracking large amounts of data. Our church uses a database for obvious things like member management and financial tracking, but for smaller weekly stuff, I’m using a spreadsheet. Create the Document Create New Document. The MAIN spreadsheet I use weekly is what I call my “Music Tracking” sheet. Simple. It’s saved as a favorite in my Google Drive, and it’s bookmarked in my browser, so I type a few shortcut
Read more →I wrote the following article for some friends launching a ministry blog this month (October, 2016.) I enjoy writing. I write to help people. I write because it’s fun to me. But this isn’t about me. This is about you. Do you have a message? Do you like to write? If writing is not fun to you, maybe you can (should?) find a new outlet for your message. We ALL have a message, but we don’t ALL have to be writers. If writing is not your thing, communicate your message another way: start a podcast, create videos, host
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Probabilities and Prophecies Prophecies of Scripture verify that the Bible is real—that it is God’s Word. Only a fool would deny that Jesus Christ was a real, historical figure (basically every historian agrees that he was a real, living person), yet many people still choose to ignore the prophecies that surround this man, Jesus. Scores of prophecies were told hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Prophets wrote down their “guesses” as to how this man would live, act and die, and all of their “guesses” came true. Some prophets predicted his birth, some his death. Some predicted his name, some
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Being a church music director is sometimes less about music and more about administration. Meaning: you sing on Sundays but do paperwork Monday through Friday. While a music director might spend a lot of time practicing with groups or arranging music, a good portion of his week might be planning orders of service, choosing congregational songs, laying out the special music calendar, purchasing choirbooks, or making sure small groups don’t double up on the same song. That takes a lot of tracking! I’m not against software that can do this for you, but I think: Software programs are expensive. Some are hundreds of
Read more →I tell people often that there are about five people who have shaped the direction of my life, and they are the top five people I respect the most. Bro. Sam Davison is one of them. He was my pastor all through college and taught me to love the Word of God like I never had before. I appreciate Bro. Sam’s kind and thoughtful words in the foreword of the book BIBS: Big Idea Bible Study, available from Calvary Baptist Publications. Here is his text as it is found in the book: Though I had been involved in Bible College work before 1998,
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I preached the Big Idea Bible Study (BIBS) concepts to our church in a 4-week miniseries back in August, 2015. The following is preaching outline #4, adapted from the book BIBS: Big Idea Bible Study, available from Calvary Baptist Publications. I preached through a more extensive series when explaining the concepts to our teens, spending several weeks within each section (Observation, Interpretation, Application), but this mini-series covers the highlights. See below for the Preaching Outline for the explanation of the third step in Bible study: APPLICATION: See the other sermons in the series here: BIBS 1 – Introduction BIBS 2 – Observation BIBS 3 – Interpretation
Read more →I preached the Big Idea Bible Study (BIBS) concepts to our church in a 4-week miniseries back in August, 2015. The following is preaching outline #3, adapted from the book BIBS: Big Idea Bible Study, available from Calvary Baptist Publications. I preached through a more extensive series when explaining the concepts to our teens, spending several weeks within each section (Observation, Interpretation, Application), but this miniseries covers the highlights. See below for the Preaching Outline for the explanation of the second step in Bible study: INTERPRETATION: See the other sermons in the series here: BIBS 1 – Introduction BIBS 2 – Observation BIBS 4 – Application
Read more →I preached the Big Idea Bible Study (BIBS) concepts to our church in a 4-week miniseries back in August, 2015. The following is preaching outline #2, adapted from the book BIBS: Big Idea Bible Study, available from Calvary Baptist Publications. I preached through a more extensive series when explaining the concepts to our teens, spending several weeks within each section (Observation, Interpretation, Application), but this miniseries covers the highlights. See below for the Preaching Outline for the explanation of the first step in Bible study: OBSERVATION: See the other sermons in the series here: BIBS 1 – Introduction BIBS 3 – Interpretation BIBS 4
Read more →I preached the Big Idea Bible Study (BIBS) concepts to our church in a 4-week miniseries back in August, 2015. The following is preaching outline #1, adapted from the book BIBS: Big Idea Bible Study, available from Calvary Baptist Publications. I preached through a more extensive series when explaining the concepts to our teens, spending several weeks within each section (Observation, Interpretation, Application), but the miniseries covers the highlights. See below for the Preaching Outline for the introductory sermon: See the other sermons in the series here: BIBS 2 – Observation BIBS 3 – Interpretation BIBS 4 – Application
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