by Pastor Mark Haines We welcome Pastor Mark Haines to Eagles In Leadership this week. He is a happy husband, father, grandfather and pastor living in the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan. You can learn more about him at his website. Our church has been struggling financially.  Many of our members lost their jobs as [...]

Posted in Church Health, finances, Guest Column, Leadership Blog, Multi-ethnic / Urban, Uncategorized No Comments »

Welcome back to the Transformed podcast. Thank you for joining us! Have you ever wondered what God thinks of your next-door neighbors? In our new series, “Walking with the Wounded,” Dr. Matthew Smith, lead pastor at Pacific Baptist Church of El Segundo, will explore that very thought. In this series we will focus our attention [...]

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By Dr. Matthew Lee Smith My phone rang yesterday afternoon. It was one of our city council members in El Segundo, California, where I recently accepted a lead pastor position. His kind words of welcome and thanks for my recent note touched my heart. He also offered to go to lunch or coffee soon and [...]

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As we walked the streets of our community this weekend giving away small bags of Valentine’s candy, my heart almost broke as I thought about all the people near our worship facility. Who are they? What’s their story? Do they know Christ? What aches and pains do they carry? “Hi, we’re your neighbor and wanted [...]

Posted in Becoming Like Jesus, christian life, Discipleship, Leadership Blog, Missional, Multi-ethnic / Urban No Comments »

By Dr. Matthew Lee Smith Over the course of the past 2 years I have been thinking about the alarming statistics concerning the American Church. My friend, Len Sweet, says that 75% of the churches in America are dying, 23% of them are plateaued (often taking those from dying churches) and the remaining 2% are [...]

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By Dr. Matthew Lee Smith   As the Christmas season came to a close, I can remember how the focus for many was on themselves. They were interested in what THEY were going to get, what parties THEY were going to and what things THEY were going to be doing. In contrast to this was [...]

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In a recent article in the California Southern Baptist, Mark Kelly reported that Focus 21 Task Force Chairman E. Glen Paden, a retired pastor and president emeritus of California Baptist Foundation, said committee members agree dramatic changes are needed to take the gospel to more than 37 million Californians-at least 60 percent of whom will [...]

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Visit most any urban church in America and you will often find a small group of people rattling around in a large facility. The “glory days” for the church have passed them by and things are currently being held together by the barest of means.   If you look and listen carefully, you will find [...]

Posted in Church Health, Leadership Blog, Missional, Multi-ethnic / Urban 2 Comments »

It seems every time Eagles In Leadership is asked to come and help an urban church, one of the key issues strangling the life out of that faith community is their church governing structure. Notably, you will find the current version of their constitution dating from the 1940s or 1950s – usually the post-WWII years [...]

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By Dr. Russell Moore The Christian response to immigrant communities in the United States cannot be “You kids get off of my lawn” in Spanish. While evangelicals, like other Americans, might disagree on the political specifics of achieving a just and compassionate immigration policy, our rhetoric must be informed by more than politics, but instead [...]

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