Know what really scares me as a pastor? It’s that my words are going to cause people to take action. People will, based on a sermon, based on a tweet, based on an interaction, or a counseling session decide things about their future based on my advice based on how I explain the wisdom of … Continued
Summer is here and yet, many of us feel like we have already had summer because our kids have been home from school or daycare for months due to COVID-19 precautions. Now that the school year has finally finished in some form or fashion, how do we make the most of the next few months … Continued
Before you came to Christ, your life aspirations arose from a wrong way of looking at the world, what the apostle Peter calls the desires of your former ignorance (1 Peter 1:14). You thought, for instance, that romance was the key to true contentment. But at some point, you realized it wasnt quite as fulfilling as youd hoped. […]
The good news is it feels like were entering a new season of leadership and ministry. Although the coronavirus is still with us, churches and businesses are reopening and things that werent possible a month or two ago are now possible again. Thats the good news. The bad news is that the new season is perhaps even more complicated than the season of crisis we just left, and leaders must be careful to avoid wasting ministry season […]
A few weeks into this madness, the global pandemic that has resulted in the unprecedented move to not provide physical worship gatherings at our church, Kenton Beshore called to check on me. Kenton is my predecessor, our pastor emeritus, and he still serves as teaching pastor for us. “How in the world are you not … Continued
One of the most disconcerting feelings we pastors experience is when we prepare a sermon and pour our heart into it, yet feel that it didnt make a difference in peoples lives. Its equally frustrating when we preach to see somebody tuning us out. What can we do to improve sermon attention? For when they do, theres a greater chance what we say will stick in their minds to give the Holy Spirit time to ultimately change their hearts. Here are some neuroscience-based tips.
I have found that regardless of how motivated I am, if the people around me are unmotivated, we arent going to be very successful as a team. This is why it is important a leader learns to recognize when a team is decreasing in motivation. And heres the greater reason. Motivation is often a catalyst to destroy motivation and momentum […]
How church leaders responded during the early stages of the pandemic, focusing on their church pandemic response.
Maurice Sendaks parents were poor Jewish immigrants to the United States from Poland. Their family that stayed behind were all killed in the Holocaust. The weekly Sunday afternoon gatherings of his extended family in Brooklyn brought in aunts and uncles that Maurice would later describe as all crazycrazy faces and wild eyes. These visits inspired […] the Bible's wild side.
