First and throughout the process, becoming a belonging culture requires that we see the image of God in each other. Men need to see and recognize that God made women in his image and for his purposes and gifted them for that calling. Those gifts include leadership, preaching, and teaching.
For some leaders, listening to another person talk about their problems is like fingernails on a chalkboard. While other leaders embrace the conversations as they gain a high conversing with others.
The message of assimilation makes me uncomfortable because it requires me to celebrate the loss of other people’s culture, traditions, and languages in order to alleviate the fears that white people, including Christians, might have about a diverse society where their position as power brokers of society may be threatened.
Becoming a better shepherd or a better leader never happens by accident, and it doesn’t simply happen over time. Men and women who improve their pastoral capacity or their leadership do so with great effort and on purpose. Here are a few helpful suggestions to start improving. If you are going to an appointment that … Continued
As the world becomes “smaller,” the incorporation of new ideas and new approaches to reading and interpreting Scripture becomes important as we encounter people with perspectives, experiences, and cultures different from our own.
As Jesus sat at the table of Zacchaeus, he, too, saw past the sinful nature. Instead, he saw a man in need. Put yourself in Zacchaeus' position, and then Jesus’.
One of the primary roles of a pastor is to gather as many sheep as possible. We all know that for people to come and join your church they need to like us. This reality means that as pastors, we perpetually serve in hazardous territory.
So, should a leader give up leading and living like Jesus because others don’t like what is happening around them? The church needs leaders to speak up and step out of the comfortable to serve the uncomfortable.
The story that the Bible tells, therefore, is the story that we are all part of whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. We have joined the story in progress, along the way, so to speak.
“It is not a matter of whether the Old Testament law applies but how the New Testament applies it.”
