Church Identity: How Your Church Must Not Be Unique
While some car companies have been experts in luxury, Volkswagen has been about cars for everyday people. Volkswagen literally means “people’s car,” and they branded themselves with economic cars. For example, the Volkswagen Beetle was a favorite during the hippie movement in the 60’s when many rebelled against extravagant spending. And when they are true […]
Focus: The One Thing I Do
Focus is the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process. Focus most often means saying “no.” Focus requires saying “yes” to the best and “no” to everything else. While movement is the most difficult simple church element to understand, focus is also the most difficult element to implement. It takes […]
Worship Gatherings Soaked in the Gospel
Throughout the Old Testament, we see God expressing deep disgust with some of the empty gatherings and routine worship offered to Him. At one point, He tells His people He hates their religious feasts and won’t listen to their showy, insincere offerings of worship (Amos 5:21–24). In another place He asks His people to quit […]
Three Signals We Are Filled with Pride
According to C. S. Lewis, our pride is our greatest sin because we hate it in others while simultaneously being unconscious of it in ourselves. Others smell the odor of our pride and are repulsed by it, but often we are oblivious to our own stench. The story of King Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26) is […]
Not Smelling Our Own Stench
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg tells a fascinating story about the launch of Febreze. The researchers and product development team at Procter & Gamble really believed they had developed a product that consumers longed for—a product that would eliminate, not merely mask, bad smells. During the product development phase, people expressed a deep […]
The Bride of Christ: Pursued and Purchased
The reality that Christians are the bride of Christ is illustrated in the Old Testament through the explicit story of Hosea and Gomer. Hosea was a prophet who ministered during a very rebellious period in Israel’s history. God chose an interesting way to get the attention of His people. When the Lord began to speak […]
The Gospel Impacts Everything, but not Everything Is the Gospel
Back in the day when the church I served in Miami still offered “The South Florida Easter Pageant,” an elaborate presentation depicting the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, a couple approached me with concerns about “the performance.” They wanted to know if “the show was going to be different.” Not sure what they meant, […]
The Power of New
I still drive the ’95 Nissan pickup truck my father and I purchased together my freshman year of college. The odometer reads 77,000 miles, but the odometer has been broken for well over a decade. The seats look pretty worn. There are scratches all over the side from my youth ministry days, hauling stages and […]
Our Biggest Regrets
Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec, two Cornell social psychologists, have studied and researched how we deal with regret. They place regret into two broad categories: actions (things we wish we had not done or said) and inactions (things we wish we had done). In their research they discovered that in the short term, we tend […]
Alignment: It’s Not Just for Cars
Alignment is the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process. Alignment to the process means that all ministry departments submit and attach themselves to the same overarching process. Alignment ensures the entire church body is moving in the same direction, and in the same manner. When a church is fully aligned, […]