Posts by Mark Howell
A Great New Resource from Thom S. Rainer: I Am a Church Member
About a month ago I received an email asking if I’d like to review a new book by Thom Rainer, the co-author of Simple Church (with Eric Geiger) and Transformational Church (with Ed Stetzer), two books I highly recommend. The new book was called I Am a Church Member: Discovering the Attitude that Makes the Difference.…
Read More5 Secret Ingredients that Supercharge Saddleback’s Church-Wide Campaigns
You probably know the basics and can easily spot the essential aspects of a garden variety church-wide campaign*. Choose a message series that has a small group curriculum that goes along with it. Spend several weeks recruiting hosts, promoting the series, challenging members to join groups. *Essentially an alignment between a weekend message series and…
Read MoreTop 5 Things to Do in July to Prepare for a Church-Wide Campaign
Planning to launch a church-wide campaign this fall? If so, you’re at about T-80 days to launch (assuming you’re reading this in early July and you’ve chosen your launch date wisely). For the purpose of this top 5 list, I’m assuming you’ve already chosen your church-wide campaign (If you haven’t, see below for some great…
Read MoreDon’t Miss This Important Public Service Announcement
How’d you get to MarkHowellLive.com today? Did you get here by email? Do you use an RSS reader? Do you follow me on Twitter or Facebook? Do you have it bookmarked? Or just search for something? You know…it might be time to make it easy on yourself! You can sign up and get my updates…
Read MoreDilbert on Strategic Decision Making
How’s this for strategic decision making?
Read More5 Keys to Clarifying the Win for Your Church-Wide Campaign
Preparing for your next church-wide campaign? What will you call a win? Will you declare what a win will look like in advance…and then aim for that? Or like the well-known Brother Juniper cartoon, will you just shoot an arrow into the fence and draw the bullseye afterward? Clarifying the win, being clear about what…
Read MoreAn Analysis of the Sermon Based Small Group Strategy
I am regularly asked about the wisdom or effectiveness of a sermon-based strategy. Underlying the question many times is the sense that providing a study to be used will keep groups from straying from the well trodden pathway. And I have to admit that at some level there is wisdom behind what they are asking.…
Read MoreA Potentially Game-Changing Mashup We’ll Be Testing in September
I’ve written a lot about how to use the HOST strategy combined with a church-wide campaign. In my mind those two strategies represent two of the most powerful ideas in small group ministry. If you’re looking for a way to jump start lots of groups and connect way beyond the usual suspects…I’ve not found anything…
Read MoreAdd “Pressure Points” to Your Church-Wide Campaign Short List
Looking for your next church-wide campaign? Don’t miss an exciting new development at LifeWay. This fall’s launch of the Bible Studies for Life curriculum series needs to be on your radar. Pressure Points, a six session study based on the book of James, is the first study in the series. Everyone faces the challenges of…
Read MoreBe Aware of the Self Serving Bias When Diagnosing Your Ministry
One of the greatest challenges in diagnosing your own ministry is successfully overcoming the self serving bias. You know this term, right? A self serving bias is “the tendency of people to attribute success to their personalities and failure to external factors.” For example, while diagnosing the previous ministry year one might determine that Event A…
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