Building Communities + Equipping Leaders
Longing to Become a Diverse Church As of last week, we are fully in “back to school season.” Our oldest son headed off to first grade, and our middle son starts preschool next week. It’s an entertaining season of child development, and one of the highlights of Kindergarten last year was joining my son and […]
Read More
The really good news for humanity is that Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life. – Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart *** In every season and at every opportunity, we need a fresh experience of Jesus. The longer we have been acquainted with Christianity, the easier it is to become stagnant […]
Read More
Mo’ money, mo’ problems. —Notorious B.I.G. Left unchecked, our lives become increasingly complex. We take in too much information and get decision fatigue. We become hyper-connected by technology and social media and become disconnected in actual relationships. We enter into forty to fifty “relational circles” (teams at work, family members, old college roomates, our homeowners […]
Read More
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. St. Paul, First Timothy 4:16 *** My favorite definition of leadership comes from John Piper: Spiritual leadership is knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to get them there by God’s methods in reliance on God’s power. Within that definition, there […]
Read More
I have described in my previous essays The League and There Will Never Be Another Kobe, that there have been two major movements within NBA history in the last three decades (1980-2016). Hoops History, part III To summarize, I call the first movement The TV Era (1980-2002): these were the NBA’s golden years, when Magic, Bird, […]
Read More
Each year around this time, community group leaders begin to ask, “What should we do this summer?” Many groups choose to take a break from regular gatherings; other groups press on with their regular rhythms all summer; still others find some reduced meeting schedule to work best for them. What is ideal for your group? (And how does the […]
Read More
You have just witnessed history. What was done last night had never been done before, will never be done again, and needs to be remembered for all time. There will never be another Kobe. The History of Pro Basketball (in Three Paragraphs) I’ve written extensively on this before, but to summarize, the history of pro […]
Read More
Why do sports matter? Is it because they comprise a $145 billion dollar global industry? Because 120 million Americans alone tune in to the Super Bowl, where advertising costs $4.5 million every thirty seconds. Do sports matter simply because of their central role in our culture and society? After all, as said the 2015 film […]
Read More
*** In this series, Five Good Reads, I’m offering pastors the most important and helpful non-required books. So, these are books you didn’t come across in seminary but will find immensely practical for ministry–and they should be fun to read, too. Just like preachers and teachers need to read fiction and poetry, since we’re in the […]
Read More
*** My undergraduate degree is in microbiology, and I spent four years doing research in cellular and molecular biology. Thankfully, I chose pastoral ministry over research or healthcare—I would have been terribly unhappy in either career. But I still enjoy reading on biology, psychology, human development, health and disease, and the philosophy of science and medicine. […]
Read More
