The real estate market is encouraging some pastors to stay put. For now. Rising interest rates produce a “golden handcuff” effect on the housing market. Golden handcuffs refer to a set of financial incentives that employers use to encourage certain emp…

I’ve worked with students and graduates in their first pastorates for almost three decades. Over the years, I’ve often asked them, “What’s most surprised you about the work of pastoring?” In no order of priority, here are some of their responses:  “How…

“The best pastors have a healthy level of paranoia.” My father’s advice struck me as odd. I was in my early 30s, pastoring through a difficult situation with the potential to split my congregation. I was anxious. He didn’t feed my anxiety, but his word…

Accountability is the acceptance of responsibility for your actions. But what does this acceptance look like with paid church staff? It’s more than theology. For example, a church leader may believe in the biblical nature of accountability but not foll…

It is cliché to say the landscape of church ministry has changed in the past five years, but it is most definitely true. While COVID is often the explanation for these changes, the reality is that they would have taken place anyway. COVID simply accelerated and exacerbated the changes. We at Church Answers see those…

The post Seven Questions We Did Not Hear from Pastors Five Years Ago appeared first on Church Answers.

Twitter blocked a petition campaign Wednesday to protect Houston pastors from having to hand over to the city government all of their sermons and personal emails dealing with the issue of homosexuality. The Christian organization Faith Driven Consumer’s Twitter hashtag campaign #HoustonWeHaveAProblem was censored by Twitter minutes after launching so that users could not Tweet […]