The Spiritual Discipline That Impacts Everything
In our research behind Transformational Discipleship, we discovered that engagement in one particular spiritual discipline positively impacts engagement in every other spiritual discipline (giving, serving, sharing the gospel, fasting, praying, etc.). In other words, while the other spiritual disciplines are important, engagement in one of these (from a research vantage point) does not necessarily increase […]
Righteous Frustration
In their now classic work, The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner wrote, “More than anything else, leadership is about creating a new way of life. Leaders must accept the responsibility for making change happen.” Leadership and change are inexorably related. When God raises a leader for a task, He often burdens that leader with righteous frustration. There […]
Fast Food Menus and Church Ministry
There is an epidemic of fast-food spirituality among believers today. We like big spiritual menus with lots of options. And we want those options served to us fast. Many churches have become like fast-food establishments. A new idea emerges, and the menu is expanded. Someone wants a special event served a particular way, and the […]
Be Fed, Then Feed
The Leadership Code is a book based on a leadership framework developed with consultation from renowned leaders around the world. The authors sought to discover the DNA of leadership by asking two basic questions: What percentage of effective leadership is basically the same regardless of industry, role, culture, situation, etc.? Of that amount (the percentage […]
Do you have a bias toward action?
Author and consultant Tom Peters popularized the phrase a “bias toward action” to describe organizations that are led with a posture to execute rather than a posture to evaluate constantly. The opposite of a bias toward action is the dreaded state of “paralysis by analysis.” On many teams what is often called “strategic planning” is […]
Dinner with God
While on this earth, Jesus spent a lot of time at a house in Bethany where two sisters, Mary and Martha lived. One day Jesus visited for dinner. As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a […]
Discipleship and Identity
The apostle Peter viewed discipleship, in part, through the lens of identity in Christ. When he wrote the epistle of 1 Peter, he was writing a group of Christians who were struggling with how to live in the world as they were experiencing intense persecution. The root of the hostility toward them was the fire that […]
Don’t Love Your Job Less
A good friend of mine, Steve Graves, recently asked me to write an article about practical faith in the professional world on his site. Steve is a organizational strategist and coach who has been very helpful to me in my transition from full-time local church ministry to leading the Church Resources division at LifeWay. I encourage […]
The Miracle of Unity
Through the sacrificial death of Christ, believers are one with God. It is the miracle of salvation. A holy God and sinful man unified. God also desires the miracle of unity for the church — for your church. Without the miracle of unity, churches divide and ministry suffers. And all this occurs while the world […]
Example and Highest End
We must be careful not to teach people that the ultimate goal of Christianity is serving. Jesus is the ultimate goal, the highest end. Our serving must ultimately be grounded in Him, and for Him, our hearts deeply tuned toward Him. We are incapable of serving for the right reasons, incapable of making any impact […]