Articles
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...
Single and Looking for a Church Home
It’s not always easy to love those who are different, those we don’t understand, or those with whom we can’t relate. But if the church is going to win the lost, we first have to find a way to reach them. And to make them feel at home. It’s not just those outside the...
Sunday Funday the Whole Week Long
One of the somewhat current popular tags that can be seen on many facebook posts is Sunday Funday. Don’t look the phrase up on urban dictionary, or it may become a less tasteful tag! However, the common use of the term seems to indicate that Sunday should be a day to...
Vocational Ministry’s Forbidden Question
Church leaders, have you ever asked yourself the forbidden question in ministry? You know the one—it goes something like this, “Am I really made for this?” If you have, then you likely felt some level of frustration, guilt, shame or condemnation toward...
Evaluating Our Ministry’s Fruit
Like many areas of professional experience, Christian churches have utilized standardized methods to determine effectiveness and decision-making. Pastors are inundated with record-keeping designed to help leadership determine the success or failure of...
What Christian Theology Has to Do with My Reality
I was born the day before my father started seminary. My dad loves to quip, “My mentors recommended I not start a family and grad school at the same time, so I started my family on Sunday and seminary on Monday!” It must have been a nightmare at the time, but the...
Covered Glory
I couldn’t understand why the more we talked about Jesus, the more outwardly pious my friend Imani became. When I first met her, she rarely bothered to cover her hair with a headscarf. She wore shirts not long enough to conceal her hips, and she didn’t seem to care...
God’s Plan for Renewal to the Ends of the Earth
The word renew means to continue something after it is paused. This is what happens to God’s plan to fill the world with His presence through His children. They again renew, re-engaging their calling to partner with God in the spreading of His presence in the world....
Becoming an Ordinary Mystic
I was ten years old. I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom and paging through a picture book about the lives of the saints. It was December 14. I know the date because I distinctly remember turning to that day’s page to see whose feast day the Catholic Church...
8 Ways Churches Can Welcome Well
Attending church can be the loneliest event of the week for new visitors longing for connection. When my family moved from Chicago to Colorado, we visited nearly twenty churches in three years. (We considered starting a collection of church mugs from welcome tables.)...
4 Ways to Thrive as a Leader
Executive pastors hold a unique role in the church. They’re responsible for maintaining and improving church operations, as well as ensuring their church team remains healthy and aligned with their church’s vision. It takes a blend of business acumen and...
Four Phrases Every Pastor Should Say Every Sunday
There’s something powerful about repetition. Doing the same thing day in and day out. Over time habits start to form, and those habits play a big role in our lives. If you have good habits, your life tends to go well. If you have bad habits, your life...
10 Preaching Mistakes You Should Avoid
I always feel a bit awkward giving preachers advice on preaching since I’m an Executive Pastor who only preaches a few times of year, but just hear me out. I’m actually probably more qualified than most people because while you are preaching the...
Engage children in worship in 4 simple steps
“How do we engage children in church?” This age-old question remains paramount for almost every children’s ministry leader, parent and pastor. And if you’ve ever sat up late at night, cutting out the gazillionth piece for some Pinterest craft that seemed...
Understanding the Purpose of Submitting to Sound Biblical, Ethical, and Spiritual Leadership
One significant responsibility every Christian has is to submit to the established spiritual authority that God has set over him or her. It’s a very simple recipe, if followed. However, one reason why so many bad things happen to so many Christians is that they don’t...
