7/31/13  A few years ago I was invited by Pastor Nathan Ivy, from Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY to talk about externally focused / justice ministry at a conference they were sponsoring. The church was in a renovated elementary school building on their midtown campus. One of the highlights was sharing the speaking platform with John Perkins. The church... Read More

7/24/13 Yesterday Leadership Network sponsored “A Day with Jim Collins” for 20 pastors and leaders in Boulder. My son, Andy from China, and I also talked our way into the event. Jim is a long-time friend of Leadership Network and is the author of six books, including Built to Last, Good to Great,  and How... Read More

 Mother and Dad celebrate 65 years of marriage today. On December 26, 1947 Violet Gustafson and Boyd Swanson tied the knot at the First Lutheran Church in Gladstone, Michigan. They had cake, punch, coffee Ida Strand made open faced sandwiches for the reception. They honeymooned the first night in Marinette, Mi and then on to... Read More

This poem was written by my cousin Dennis’ son, Mark Berglund, recalling Christmas at our house in Stockton, CA 41 years ago. Mark captured for all of us a magic moment in time that we all who were there remember as if it were yesterday. All the older relatives have passed except for Mom and... Read More

A couple of weeks ago we had the last session of our Externally Focused Small Groups (EFSGs) InnovationLab. It was a great InnovationLab consisting of 5 churches who, a year ago, had 55 EFSGs but ended up 386. Here are a few ideas behind the power of EFSGs: 1. Although good deeds create good will... Read More

Most of you have seen the movie Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis’ book of the same title. The story is built around how manager, Billy Beane, used statistical analysis to build a contending world championship team. Until Billy Beane’s approach, conventional wisdom held that big league scouts could best pick winning players, based on their... Read More

How important is your church’s mission? Who even remembers what the mission is? How do you know if your mission is the “right” mission? A couple weeks ago Leadership Network convened the first Marriage Ministry InnovationLab, consisting of seven churches with an average weekly attendance of 3,500. Each of these churches had a fairly robust... Read More

In preparation for leading Leadership Network’s Marriage Ministry InnovationLab (http://leadnet.org/site/page/3233) I spent several hours looking up Websites to discover what the 100 largest churches are doing in ministry to married couples. Yes, I looked at all 100 of them. Here are a few observations. Of the 100 largest churches in the U.S., 36 /100 had... Read More

Lately I’ve been asking people, “What percentage of married people do you think would say they are happily married?” I’ve heard responses from 5 percent to 40 percent. But the correct answer is pretty astonishing. Every year since 1973 researchers at the University of Chicago have been conducting a “Trends in Wellbeing” study (http://www.norc.org/PDFs/publications/GSSTrendsinWellbeing_March2011.pdf). One... Read More