God’s Desire for One-Percenters
When I was in high school I so badly wanted to be tall. We had a couple guys on our high school basketball team that were 6’5” or taller, and I envied them. They could dunk easily. They were more imposing defensively than me. I asked God to make me taller and He did not. […]
5 Ways Thinking “Work-Life Integration” Has Helped Me
In recent years some consultants and counselors have encouraged people to stop thinking “work-life balance” and start thinking “work-life integration.” While some say this is semantics, others believe the language represents a fundamental shift in thinking with “work-life balance” as a view of your life as having disparate parts (work and life) and “integration” as […]
One Thing We Know For Sure Is God’s Will for You…
Pastors are often asked questions about God’s will for a particular decision someone is facing. “How do I know which job is God’s will for me?” Or which relationship? Or which city to live in? Often I do not know the answer to a question about God’s will in a specific situation, but I can […]
3 Essentials for Leadership Development
In his book The Leadership Code Dave Ulrich articulates that being a “human capital developer” is an essential role of being a leader. According to Ulrich, with personal integrity as the indispensable and foundational characteristic of a leader, there are four other essential characteristics of leadership: strategist, executor, talent manager, and human capital developer. After […]
The Leader, Exercise, and 4 Ways to Keep Going
When I first heard, as a Christian, challenges to exercise those challenges were typically connected to taking care of the body the Lord has given, to stewarding well the one body the Lord has provided us in this life. When the apostle Paul challenged Timothy to train himself in godliness, he articulated that physical training […]
Character First, But Is Chemistry or Competence Next?
Several years ago William Vanderbloemen and I had a conversation where he asked me to force-rank important qualities to consider when bringing a new person on the team. Many leaders have used three our four C’s as a helpful alliterated tool to describe essential characteristics when interviewing potential team members. You have likely heard the […]
4 Practical Ways to Have Fewer Announcements in Your Worship Services
Earlier this week I lamented the existence of lots of “announcement time” in church services because of the ineffectiveness of the announcements and the disruption the announcements bring to the arc or flow of the service. I acknowledge that the desire to give announcements comes from a good place – a place of wanting to […]
5 Reasons Not to Give Announcements in Worship Service
Several years ago my former boss and wise sage, Thom Rainer, made the observation that large churches (700 and up in average worship attendance) are highly unlikely to have announcements as a part of the worship service. Thom always has a keen sense of what is happening in large number of churches, so while many […]
3 Questions to Test Your Ambition
C.S. Lewis gave a graduation commencement speech to graduates at Kings College at the University of London. The students were graduating from a prestigious school with their whole lives in front of them, and Lewis talked to them about their ambitions. He knew many of them would land a great job and long to be […]
The Only Way To Rejoice Always
I have been thinking about the command to “Rejoice Always” a lot over the last five weeks for two reasons. First, I have been preparing for a teaching series on God’s will in the Scripture “rejoicing always” is clearly His desire for us. The apostle Paul wrote: “Rejoice always. Pray constantly, give thanks in everything; […]