Picture a twenty-seven-year-old named Alex. I’ve made up his name, but his situation could be true. Alex grew up around church. There were youth trips, worship songs, Bible verses on T-shirts, and enough Christian vocabulary to know the difference between a sermon and a small group. Then came college, work, a move, a pandemic, a few disappointments, and a steady drift.

What if every baptism were treated not as the end of an event, but as the beginning of a purposeful shared journey toward Christlikeness? We Planned the Wedding, But Who Is Helping with the Marriage? I’ve heard that the median cost for a wedding these days in the United States is somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000. The average is even higher, landing between $33,000 and $36,000.1 Just imagine what you could do with an extra $30,000. If your rent is $1,700 a month, you coul

This is about the cost to pastors who are called to shepherd those on the church rolls, who don't attend, and attenders who are not committed to membership in the congregation.

The “Ghost Roster” is the credibility gap between the names a church claims and the people it can actually know, shepherd, disciple, and hold in accountable covenant. The gap has two sides: members who are absent and regular attenders who have not become members.