Why your passion is a doorway and not a distraction I have a friend whose entire world was sports. Not casually interested in sports. Completely fluent in sports. He could give you the batting average of any Reds player from 2014. He could tell you the rushing yards from every Buckeyes game he’d ever watched….
A hard reckoning about numbers, urban deserts, and what it means when a denomination forgets the difference between preserving a structure and advancing a kingdom. Last week I wrote about the sale of Concordia Ann Arbor and I asked a hard question about what it reveals when a denomination puts a price tag on a…
Why the hunger you can’t name might be the most important thing about you There is a hunger that doesn’t have a name. You know the one. It’s not the hunger you feel at noon when you skipped breakfast. It’s deeper than that. It’s that low-grade ache, that sense that something is missing. It’s the…
There’s a strange tension that nobody really prepares you for when the thing you’re leading grows past what you can personally hold. For a pastor, it’s the congregation. For a manager, it’s the team. For a parent, it might just be the family table getting louder and more complicated. But the tension is the same:…
Why the thing you’re chasing to fill the void probably isn’t the thing Somewhere out there right now, someone is ordering an embarrassingly expensive pizza delivery. We’ve all been there. Hungry, slightly irrational, willing to spend money or time or energy we don’t really have just to scratch the itch. The hunger takes over and…
We had one of those conversations. You know the kind. It starts over something small. Something that, if you wrote it down, later wouldn’t even sound worth mentioning. Tone was off. Timing was bad. Somebody said something a little sharper than they meant to. And before long, you’re not talking about that thing anymore. You’re…
If we’re going to stop managing decline and actually start stewarding the mission, then we have to finish what we started. The first three moves were about people, partnership, and process. These final three are about focus, funding, and fruit. And if we miss these, we’ll keep spinning our wheels no matter how many conversations we have….
Healthy churches don’t happen by accident. Discover 3 practical steps—teams, partnerships, and playbooks—to strengthen mission and discipleship.
Grab that cup of coffee or whatever beverage suits you this time of day. I want to talk about something that doesn’t get said out loud very often in ministry circles, but probably should. Before we dig in too deeply here this one is a shout out to my ministry friends. I’ve been there. I…
In John 21, Jesus meets Peter in his imperfect love and commissions him anyway. What that means for your faith might change how you follow Jesus.
