


Preaching a Church Vision Sermon Series? 4 Principles and 4 Tips
When the temperatures cool down and the kids head back to school, life resumes a sense of routine and normalcy. (Of course, for my friends in the southern hemisphere, you’re just getting warmed up, but bear with me…) Early Fall tends to be an optimum time for...
Sustaining the Weary with a Word
This isn’t a private message, but it is a deeply personal one. This morning, I opened my Bible to Isaiah 50:4-9, one of the passages assigned for this coming weekend in The Revised Common Lectionary. And God met me there. The first few lines of the passage are: The...
This is No Time to Preach in Neutral
In Dare to Lead, her wonderful book about vulnerability as the key to influential leadership, Brené Brown proclaims a simple and powerful truth, “Clarity is kind.” And on the other side of the same coin, “A lack of clarity is unkind.” In other...
The Three Voices of Effective Pastoral Leadership
I grew up in a church where visiting evangelists would scream, then gasp for breath, then scream a little more. They walked around on the stage and sometimes down the aisles, red-faced and often carrying a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat they’d collected on their...
How to Overcome Your FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Once and For All
FOMO (the “fear of missing out”) is a real thing, and it’s more intense than ever. We’re afraid we’ll miss out on all the cool stuff. We’ll miss out on doing something significant with our lives. But God has a purpose for every one of us – a unique pathway to...
When to Take Burn-the-Ships, No-Turning-Back, Massive Action
Some decisions are so radical that there is simply no going back. They’re life-changing, and sometimes world-changing. The problem is, only a relatively few people will ever experience them. Out of twelve spies who scouted out the promised land, only two would...
How Worship Changes You From the Inside Out
God has far greater blessings planned for you in eternity than you’re ready for yet, and one of his primary means of maturing and growing us to be ready is the time we spend with him in personal worship. Isaiah’s story (in chapter 6 of the book by his...
The ONE Thing That Changes Everything
I mentioned in a post about How to Plan a Daily Quiet Time with God that I had read Hal Elrod’s book, Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8 am). Hal makes a bold claim – that you can absolutely change your...