Articles
Build Ministry Teams
How To Build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams How to Build Entrepreneurial Ministry Teams. Church staff regularly request our recommendations regarding which personality profiles and leadership style profiles are best suited for the various leadership roles within their...
Power of Prayerwalking
Walk This Way: Exploring the Power of Prayerwalking Recently the simple act of walking has gained renewed appreciation. But what if we combined this mindful movement with the power of prayer? This is where prayerwalking emerges, offering a unique blend of physical...
Submission in Marriage
Why Submission in Marriage Isn’t Blind Obedience “I need help submitting to my husband,” my client said. I noted her sad countenance. “Tell me about your relationship with him.” The woman, I’ll call Alice, cooked, cleaned, and financially supported her family. Her...
Disciple-Making Grade
A Modern Parable: Does Your Disciple-Making Make the Grade? Imagine with me that your family moved into a new community and was exploring schools for your children to attend. You and your spouse schedule an interview with the head principal of a prospective school....
Make Disciples Effectively
Making Disciples of All People For years I led my church in what is sometimes called street evangelism. We would walk up to people we didn’t know and start conversations about God. As it happens, my church was also in the hood where there were a lot of Jehovah’s...
Understanding Trauma: A Savior’s Perspective
A Savior's Understanding of Trauma Because God saw the pain and suffering I walked through, he provided the help, support, healing, and deliverance I needed. And he will provide complete healing when Christ returns. I can always rely on a Savior who identifies...
The Power of Flower: Cultivating Faith
The Flower Power Strategy Years ago, when I was a young pastor in my twenties, the Lord used me to start a new outreach church within a community devoid of healthy churches. Most of the people who came to our outreach ministry had little or no church background. What...
Leadership Paradigms from Jesus
Jesus's Paradigmatic Leadership Jesus’s words and actions in the upper room before his crucifixion provide paradigmatic guidance from the New Testament on leadership. Jesus gathers a group of leaders—his disciples—who are shaping the movement he began and will shape...
Finding Balance with the Right Pole
Finding Balance: The Importance of Stability in Life Discovering the Right Tools for Finding Balance I’m in elementary school, working on a science project that will demonstrate my freshly acquired knowledge about levers and pulleys: a hoist-up-and-down kitchen bucket...
Finding Courage in Scripture
Seeking Courage in Scripture In his extraordinary book about Gentiles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Sir Martin Gilbert recounts the story of David Prital, who found refuge among a small Ukrainian Baptist sect. He had sought them out on advice from a friendly...
Warfare and Royalty
PREPARING FOR OUR MISSION, PART 3 Embracing Spiritual Warfare and Royalty Promoted to Royalty Understanding the Spiritual Battlefield Your world is at war. You were born into a world of chaos and destruction, pain, and division that so often typifies war. And as with...
Rethinking Church Growth
Two Misguided Assumptions About Church Growth As a church leader, perhaps you’re asking yourself, How do I reach the spiritually sleeping and spiritually dead in my community? How do I disciple people to know Jesus deeply and be known by Him fully? And how do I preach...
Preparing for Mission, Part 2
Getting Childish Isaiah 11:6 (New International Version) “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.” See Yourself as Childish: Isaiah 11:6 envisions...
Overcome Toxic Thoughts
He was my favorite teacher. I had hoped and wished to get Mr. Saperstein for the fourth grade, and he was even better than all the kids said! He was funny and kind, and I learned a lot from him. And he gave us a whole hour each day for quiet reading time. During this...
Embracing Forced Pauses
Doesn’t a forced pause always seem to happen at the most inopportune times? Not now, Lord, we tend to whisper loudly. I have noticed though, as I get older, that maybe I would do better to not resist these unchosen times of slowing down (and, often, solitude). Because...
Preparing For Mission, Part 1
You are Royal How do you see yourself? When you attend a social activity, how do you introduce yourself? How do you describe yourself to others? Does the interaction go something like this? “Hi, my name is David”. “So, David, what do you do?” “I‘m a Ministry Systems...
Does God Really Care If I Get a Sex Change?
Being in ministry provides leaders with a front-row seat to the good, the bad, and the ugly of people’s lives. If I’ve learned anything through the years, it’s this: Life is messy. And it doesn’t come with a nicely packaged answer to suit every occasion. Consequently,...
Understanding Victim Blaming
My pastor sat in his chair and steepled his fingers as he listened to my confession. When I finished, he asked me, “Did you enter this relationship with your consent?” I thought about my constant stream of nos, the boundaries pushed and prodded over and over, the...
Resisting the Hero Narrative
We want heroes and want to be heroes. We imagine ourselves as the Billy Grahams, the Elijahs. We like to imagine ourselves in their company. We want to be that effective. To shape a society where our set of values and preferences is the norm. Where we can fit in and...
Stepping into the Impossible
There comes a time to move and to act. God commanded his people to do the impossible and step into the flooding waters: “Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing....
