Our articles encourage, educate, and equip church leaders as they serve Christ at their churches.
Dec 5, 2022Watermark Resources
4 Ways To Care For And Enrich Marriages In Your Church
It would be impossible to list all the books, retreats, programs, and ministries that exist to serve married couples in the church. It’s appropriate and good that we emphasize this area of care. But the sheer number of options can become overwhelming, and choosing how to best help marriages in each situation takes wisdom and discernment.
Marriage
Church Leadership
Nov 19, 2022Watermark Resources
How To Be An Excellent Manager
We talk a lot about church leadership, but not enough about management. Sure, there’s a lot of overlap between the two, but there are also some key distinctions. Leaders can rally people with big visions, but they wouldn’t get very far without managers to execute them. A manager’s job boils down to three things:
Church Leadership
Nov 11, 2022Watermark Resources
Finding Your Voice: How God Has Wired You to Lead and Communicate
Inspiring leaders—the ones whose words stay with you—tend to have a good sense of their own communication styles. Whether they’re preaching a sermon, leading a prayer, or just chatting with a colleague, they lean into the ways God has gifted them, and the result is powerful.
Church Leadership
Nov 2, 2022Watermark Resources
How To Help Marriages In Your Church
As believers, we know that healing belongs to the Lord. Yet often we focus on our part as his instruments, leading to feelings of inadequacy. God’s people have struggled with these feelings throughout recorded history, as we see in Exodus 3 and 4 when Moses protests that he isn’t the best man for the job God has commanded him to do.
Marriage
Church Leadership
Oct 6, 2022Watermark Resources
The First Steps To Starting A Marriage Ministry
What we've learned the past 14 years Church marriage ministries offer on-ramps into your church for people who might never otherwise come. They establish an authentic and healthy foundation for families and relationships in your body, and they address an obvious and heartbreaking need, as couples within the church continue to separate and divorce at rates comparable to those outside it. But deciding to serve married couples is the easy part; figuring out how to start a marriage ministry is much more complicated. You don’t need any special credentials to do this work--God equips the people he calls--but it does take wisdom and planning. Based on what we’ve learned over the past 14 years running our own marriage ministry, Re|engage, here are the steps you shouldn’t skip:
Marriage
Church Leadership
Dec 20, 2021John McGee
10 Marriage Ministry Mistakes
When I first started working in marriage ministry nearly 20 years ago, I admittedly did not know what I was doing. I was a young guy at a young church that didn’t even have a marriage ministry before I got there. Experience is a great teacher, and I’ve since learned a lot from mistakes—both mistakes I’ve made myself, and lessons learned from other marriage ministers who have shared their stories with me.
Marriage
Church Leadership
May 10, 2021Watermark Resources
Why Budgeting Isn’t About The Numbers
Is budgeting at your church an afterthought? Is it something that is dictated by one person or group with no input from those who will have to live by the budget? Is the budgeting process one of gamesmanship, where people ask for more than they need knowing that they will get a certain percent of the ask? Or is the budget exactly the same each year, with just a percentage added to each line to cover inflation?
Church Leadership
Mar 29, 2021Watermark Resources
The Hard Work Of Hiring
Hiring for your church staff is a high-stakes game.
Church Leadership
Mar 15, 2021Watermark Resources
Why We Have Boring Annual Reviews
The dreaded annual performance review. It is a yearly source of anxiety, awkwardness, and/or pointless paperwork for employees and managers everywhere.
Church Leadership
Jan 25, 2021Watermark Resources
Why Church Membership Matters
What does it mean to be a member of your church? Do you know who your members are, and how they are doing? What makes them different from non-members?
Discipleship
Church Leadership
Dec 14, 2020Watermark Resources
More Than Fetching Coffee
For most people, the word internship conjures up images of fetching coffee, sorting through filing cabinets, or inputting data into spreadsheets. Even in church circles, internships often amount to nothing more than busy work and the occasional planning meeting. Interns typically fill the role of “doing whatever the full-time staff don’t want to do themselves.” And sadly, opportunities like this often leave both interns and the churches they serve at wanting for more.
Discipleship
Church Leadership
Dec 7, 2020John McGee
Your Most Important Christmas Ministry
For many church leaders, life reaches a fever pitch during the holiday season. You’re probably concerned about making budgets, preparing end-of-year reports, planning the best Christmas Eve service possible—and doing it all with the ongoing challenges of a pandemic. With all of the December activity it can be easy to forget one group: your family.
Marriage
Church Leadership
Nov 30, 2020Watermark Resources
When Hard Conversations Go Bad
What do you do? We’ve all been there. You’re having a hard conversation with someone, and things aren’t going well. They’re not responding the way you had hoped. No matter how much you try, you seemingly can’t see eye-to-eye. The conversation gets heated, or it drags on endlessly with no progress made. It feels like you’re in a worse spot now than when you started. What do you do?
Discipleship
Church Leadership
