May 23, 2022 | Leadership
It seems evident that the church Jesus started was supposed to be a safe place for people, especially the most vulnerable. This included people guilty of sin and evidently very broken. And some ancient stories bear witness to this kind of church having existed for at...
Jan 14, 2022 | Leadership
Be real with people, or be prepared to lose them. It’s hard. As Pastor Rick Warren wrote once, we all fight against three particular fears: the fear that we will be exposed for who we truly are the fear that we will be rejected the fear that we will be hurt...
Nov 30, 2021 | Leadership
There is a LOT that I miss about being a pastor. Like staff meetings. I miss teaching on Sundays, for sure. I definitely miss baptizing people. As awesome as all of those moments could be, there was one moment sweeter still, and it happened at least weekly. So I wrote...
Nov 16, 2021 | Leadership, Living, Marketing, Money
There is tremendous power in believing in people and telling them so. In fact, one of the biggest factors carrying me through a currently difficult season is hearing from people who still believe in me enough to tell me. I wrote a short piece about this over on my...
Jan 16, 2021 | Culture, Leadership
So, what do we do about all this stuff? Years of preaching and listening to sermons about how to be positive, happy, and successful definitely did NOT prepare us to endure a lengthy global pandemic, which triggered a recession, which occurred during an election year,...
Nov 2, 2020 | Culture, Leadership
When I was starting in ministry, I was very nostalgic and felt attached to the decades in which evangelicalism was thriving most easily in America, as if that were a better era in which to do ministry. Not only have I come to understand how that season was not a...
Aug 20, 2020 | Leadership
It’s just hard! Those are three of the nicest words I’ve ever heard. When you’re hurting and sad and you don’t even know exactly why you’re so sad, but someone, instead of offering solutions or guilt trips or “snap out of it” advice just comes along and validates what...