Church Chairs in the Christmas Story? We walked out of a meeting with one of our strategic partners, “Hey, I want to introduce you guys to another one of our clients, an architectural firm,” Bill said. “Great, we love making connections with people we can help,” I responded. As manufacturers it is always nice when [...]

Hope Finds Feet in a Depressed Economy We started the ritual of setting aside time together when we were in our first growing congregation. It did not take long to realize that we could minister to the community and end up completely missing each other in the process. So, Janice and I were on one [...]

Remember What Your Mother Taught You about Gratitude Ray Wheeler, DMin. A pastor and several of his congregation visited our Chino church chair factory the other day to look at church chairs. One of the members had their seven year old son in tow and while he was well behaved he was obviously bored – [...]

In the Margins or at the Center? We discovered something profound by accident. In our quest to understand how to build better church chairs we asked, “Why do you like your church?” What we ended up with was what Francis Chan calls bragging about God. In a society in which so many voices clamor to [...]

How Did We Make It So Boring? By Ray Wheeler, DMin. The problem was that the change project we designed as a pathway to release ministry in the congregation threatened to turn into a train wreck. My pastor and I had spent hours sitting in church chairs in the sanctuary reflecting on the health of [...]