Articles
The Decline and Fall of Seminaries
I am not a teacher, but an awakener. Robert Frost In the medieval world, thinking about God was done in a monastery where it was bathed in a liturgical setting amid devotional practices. In the modern world, thinking about God is done in a university...
The Perfect Church Part 2 – We Deal with Our Sin
As a whole, we typically do not like to deal with our own mess. I don’t think anyone truly loves admitting that they are wrong. I hate being the one to raise my hand and say, “Hey, I’m sorry - please forgive me for ______.” Just this weekend I remember...
Blindness
Blindness “Put on your sunglasses,” Aaron says as we shoulder our packs outside the teahouse. He points to the blue sky and the blazing sun. “With the way the sun is shining on this snow up here, without sunglasses you’ll go blind before too long.”...
ALONE WITH TRUTH: A Surprising Antidote to Ministry Boredom and Burnout
There is no higher vocation or more rewarding life than Christian ministry. Whatever the area of service, being in the employ of the Lord is an earthly and eternal honor. I know this to be true. For nearly fifty years, I have been privileged to serve as...
The Perfect Church Part 1
The one phrase I’ve been told over and over and over again throughout my time in the church world is: “There is no perfect church.” I hate this statement; passionately hate it when people say this to me. Why? Because it makes us sound lazy. It allows us...
Budget Blunders
Whether your church has sixty-five people or sixty-five hundred, money matters. Even so, many pastors tell me that they find budgeting to be—at best—a necessary-but-distracting process. I’ve never heard a young pastoral candidate confide that the initial...
Rest is Productive
When our third man cub was four years old, we experienced a year of him unexplainably waking throughout the night, screaming and crying. Troy and I (mostly Troy because he’s a very kind husband) would be in and out of bed seven or eight times a night...
The Time to Pivot is Now
Throughout the 1990s I served as the student ministries pastor in a thriving, suburban church in Little Rock, AR, that grew from 2,000 to 5,000 attending members in eight years. In that time and place, money was not an issue. Tithes and offerings...
Ten Reasons You Should Quit the Ministry
I’m a firm believer that the world needs more churches and more pastors. However, there are some pastors out there who are doing more harm to the church than good. I’ve spent the past two years trying to encourage and equip small town pastors to grow...
Peace in our times requires salvation and the restoration of virtue
As we begin another presidential election year, followers of Christ may have sentiments like recent election cycles. Many of us see both good and bad in the competing positions of those seeking office, but we despair over the incivility and contempt...
Encouragement For Leaders – ALONE (Part Two)
“Turn to me and be gracious to me for I am lonely and afflicted.” Psalms 25:16 Alone! Why do I feel so alone in the leadership of this ministry? With dozens of people around me, I feel separate, isolated and cut off. What am I supposed to do, Lord? Do I carry this...
Power in the Pulpit
There is a popular preaching textbook with the title “Power in the Pulpit”, and the reference to power is a reference to the potential strength that comes from proper techniques being used to preach an expository sermon. Certainly, that is one form of power! However,...
Pastors: Transforming Wounds into Wisdom
Jolyn Davidson is a licensed psychotherapist in practice for over thirty years. Davidson has been a consultant for and trainer of pastors and leaders of non-profit Christian ministries and for-profit organizations here and abroad. She is a consultant to...
Please Don’t Ask Me To Tithe
There is no subject in the modern day church more polarizing than tithing. Even the very mention of the word brings strong emotional responses from both ministers and members. No one seems to be opposed to its validity, only its necessity. Most group...
The Beautiful and Terrifying Silence You Need
Tramping through the snow, I stop for a moment. Everything around me is perfectly still. Only my footprints break the surface of the pure, white snow, and even these are behind me and out of sight. As far as my eyes can see, the world is untouched, asleep. The...
Encouragement For Leaders – ALONE
“Turn to me and be gracious to me for I am lonely and afflicted.” Palms. 25:16 Alone! Why do I feel so alone in the leadership of this ministry? With dozens of people around me, I feel separate, isolated and cut off. What am I supposed to do, Lord? Do I...
Seven Things I Lost Because of Church Growth
When I first walked into my church over 12 years ago, there were 87 people in attendance. Today, across two campuses, there are over 700 people on a typical weekend. I’ve seen so many incredible things happen in my church over the years, and I have gained so much. But...
The View from Rock Bottom
When a friend of mine received a difficult diagnosis, she chose to share it on Facebook as she tried to process her feelings. She was grappling with her new reality: At barely 21 years of age she had a chronic, incurable condition, one that meant coping with daily...
Methods Change and Shift, but Christian Values Remain the Same
Discipline, commitment, and persistence matter very little in the long run if you are committed to the wrong things. Passionately wrong is still wrong. Persistence in error is still error. Right or wrong, your life and behavior are defined by the things you value....
Training for Bivocational Ministry Inside and Outside of the Church
Being a bivocational minister means serving a church part time while holding down a secular job until the church can pay you enough to go full time. Right? In some cases that is true, but there is a decided shift toward bivocational ministry as a...
