Pastors: Shepherd and Lead “the Teacher in You”

Kenton Beshore (my predecessor and pastor emeritus at our church) and I meet every other week for lunch, and I always learn something. Recently Kenton shared some helpful insight about managing the multiple responsibilities of a senior pastor. They would likely apply to other roles too. I am paraphrasing, but he essentially said: “You are […]

5 Learnings From Serving the Church as I Go Back to the Church

“What learnings from serving many churches are you taking with you as you go back to serving one church?” It has been a common question that ministry leaders have asked me over the last several months. While serving as senior vice-president of LifeWay, I was on a team that gets to serve tens of thousands […]

Four possibilities when hearing “the teaching is not deep enough”

When I speak at a large event, inevitably someone in a local church will pull me aside and tell me the teaching in their church is not “deep enough.” If you have been involved in church ministry, you have surely heard the phrase. For a pastor who longs to faithfully feed people the Word of […]

Is a Pastor a Leader?

Sadly in many contexts, pastors either fail to exercise leadership or are stripped of their leadership. Those who fail to lead their congregations are often content to be chaplains who feverishly run from need to need without leading the flock in a particular direction. In other cases, a local church greatly hampers the leadership of […]