The Power of Flower: Cultivating Faith

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

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...
Finding Courage in Scripture

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

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

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

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

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

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...