Tag: discipleship (Page 1 of 29)

You Keep Going Back to the Wrong Well

June 1, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Why the thing you’re drinking from isn’t satisfying the thirst you actually have

We have a spring on the back of our property.

It’s not dramatic. Just a wet spot on a hill that never dries out. Even in July when everything else is cracked and brown. Even in the winters when the temperature drops to 30 below windchill and the ground pops and cracks from the freeze. That spring keeps trickling no matter the conditions around it.

My son found that out the hard way a few years ago. He was home from the military, decided to take the four-wheeler out on the field. Looked frozen solid from a distance. But it wasn’t. He hit the spring at full speed and the four-wheeler went in eight inches deep into soft mud. In December. In a frozen field.

It took a truck and a tow strap to get it out. And if memory serves me correctly there’s a boot still under the ground somewhere back there.

A spring doesn’t stop flowing just because everything around it looks frozen.

I’ve been thinking about that image a lot recently.

The Thing You’re Thirsty For

What are you thirsty for? What’s the thing you believe will finally make everything better? The relationship you want fixed. The diagnosis you want reversed. The extra zero in the bank account. The new job because you can’t stand the current one. The season of life you keep waiting to arrive so you can finally feel settled.

We spend enormous energy chasing things we believe will satisfy that feeling. And most of them do for a while. And then the feeling comes back. And we go looking again.

We keep going back to the same wells. Not because we’re irrational. Because we’re thirsty. And thirsty people drink whatever is close.

There’s a story in John 4 about a woman who came to a well alone in the middle of the day. Not in the morning with everyone else. Midday. Alone. The detail matters because women in that culture came to the well together in the morning. It was kind of a social ritual. Coming alone in the heat of the afternoon tells you something about her standing in the community. She was avoiding people.

Jesus meets her there and eventually the conversation gets honest. She’d had five husbands. The man she was currently living with wasn’t her husband. And Jesus doesn’t shame her for any of it. He says: you’ve been trying to fill your thirst from relationships. And none of them have worked.

Because they were never designed to.

The Ceremony That Had to Be Repeated

In John chapter 7, Jesus shows up at the Feast of Tabernacles. This was an eight-day festival where, among other things, the priest came down from the Temple Mount every day with a golden pitcher, walked to the Pool of Siloam, drew water, walked back, and poured it at the altar. A picture of how God had provided for his people. A beautiful, meaningful ritual.

That had to be done again every single day of this festival. And every year.

Because it was pointing at something. Not completing something.

On the last great day of the feast, after the priest had poured water seven times. Jesus stood up in the middle of the ceremony and shouted:

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 
John 7:37–38

He’s not criticizing the ceremony. He’s completing it. He’s saying: all of this stuff – the pitcher, the water, the annual return to the same ritual – it was pointing at me. I’m the thing you’ve been rehearsing.

A Spring, Not a Reservoir

Here’s what I find interesting about the specific image Jesus uses. He doesn’t say he’ll give you a tank full of water. He doesn’t say a reservoir. He says rivers, plural rivers, flowing from inside you.

A reservoir runs dry if you don’t refill it. A spring flows from a source you didn’t create and can’t control. It keeps going because it’s connected to something deeper than the surface.

That’s what Jesus is offering. Not a one-time fill-up. Not a spiritual top-off when things get low. A spring inside you that keeps flowing because the source is him, not your circumstances.

A spring doesn’t stop flowing when the ground freezes. That’s the point of a spring.

Whatever dry season you’re in right now…the diagnosis, the season of loneliness, the job that’s going nowhere, the relationship that’s harder than you thought it would be…the spring doesn’t care what the surface looks like.

What This Means This Summer

Summer has a way of making us think that if we just do enough things, we’ll feel full. Vacations, experiences, events, time with people. All of it good. None of it able to do what we secretly hope it will.

You’ll come back from the lake trip still carrying the thing you carried in. The ache doesn’t take vacations.

The invitation from John 7 is not complicated. If you’re thirsty and you probably are for something, then come to the right well. Not the one you’ve been going back to out of habit or desperation. The one that doesn’t run dry.

Your greatest longing isn’t for water from a river. It’s for the Spirit from the Father.

That’s the claim Jesus makes. And it’s either the most important thing you’ll hear this year or it’s not true. There isn’t much middle ground.

What well have you been going back to? And is it working?

You Already Speak the Language. You Just Don’t Know It Yet.

May 27, 2026 / / 0 Comments

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. You could not have a conversation with Justin without it eventually becoming a sports conversation.

For a long time, people around him treated that as a quirk to work around. Like his depth of knowledge about sports statistics was something to get past before you could get to the real stuff.

And then someone pointed out something to him that changed the way he thought about himself entirely.

Sports is a language. And languages are doorways.

Every Passion Is a Language

There’s a concept in Lutheran theology called vocation, which sounds more academic than it is. The basic idea is simple: God doesn’t call most people out of their lives and into a monastery. He sends them into the specific life they already have, with the specific skills and passions they already carry, to do something meaningful with them.

You don’t have to become a professional religious person to have a meaningful faith. You just have to recognize that whatever you already do fluently is a language. And you can speak important things in it.

Justin figured out that every sports analogy has a spiritual twin. Interception. Comeback. Playing through injury. Being down at halftime. He started having conversations he’d never been able to have before, because he was speaking in a language the people around him already understood.

God doesn’t call you out of your life. He sends you into it.

The Problem Isn’t Knowledge. It’s Fear.

I’ll tell you something I shared from the pulpit this past Sunday: I was not always someone who talked openly about what I believed. There was a long stretch of my life when I was genuinely afraid to say what I thought in public. Not because I didn’t have thoughts. Because I’d already calculated what it would cost me socially to say them.

Most people I talk to aren’t quiet about their faith because they don’t know enough. They’re quiet because they’re afraid. Afraid of looking weird. Afraid of not having the right answer to a hard question. Afraid of the relationship getting complicated.

And so they stay quiet. And they call it being respectful. And sometimes it actually is. But a lot of the time it’s something else wearing a polite disguise.

What changed for me, and what I think changes for anyone who moves from quiet to honest, is not more information. It’s a shift in whose approval you’re managing.

When you’re speaking for yourself, protecting your reputation, the cost is always too high. When you’re speaking for something bigger than yourself, the math changes.

What Pentecost Actually Was

Christians call last Sunday Pentecost, which is a Greek word for fifty, because it happened fifty days after Easter. It’s the day the early followers of Jesus received the Holy Spirit in a dramatic, visible way. Wind. Fire. The ability to speak across language barriers. Three thousand people changed their lives in a single afternoon.

They were fishermen and tax collectors and craftsmen. They spoke the language of boats and fish markets and coin counting. What they received was the Spirit . And that Spirit helped them use the passion they already had to say something that actually mattered.

Pentecost isn’t the story of people becoming different. It’s the story of people finally becoming fully themselves and realizing that what they already were was exactly what was needed.

What This Means for You on a Tuesday Morning

You have a language. You might not think of it that way, but you do. It’s whatever you can talk about at length without running out of things to say. Cooking. Finance. Parenting. Running. Woodworking. Design. Customer service. Whatever you’ve been doing long enough that you think in its vocabulary.

That language is not a distraction from your purpose. It might be your purpose in disguise.

Justin can talk about his faith in baseball. I can preach in stories. You can speak in whatever it is that you speak fluently. The question is whether you’re willing to.

You don’t need to be a theologian. You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to be willing to use the language you already have to point toward the thing that changed your life.

That’s what Pentecost is about. Not a one-time event in a room two thousand years ago. A way of being in the world fully present, fully yourself, fully given over to something bigger than your own reputation.

What’s your language? And what would it look like to actually use it?

The Table That Was Closed Is Open

May 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

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 feeling of incompleteness you can’t quite locate or explain.

Some of you have felt it in a quiet moment when everything in your life is going well, nothing is wrong, and yet there it is. That restlessness. That vague sense that you were made for something you haven’t quite found yet.

C.S. Lewis said something about this that I keep coming back to. He said: if you find in yourself a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that you were made for another world. That’s not depression. That’s not dysfunction. That’s the imprint of your origin.

Sunday’s sermon was about what that hunger is for. And where it leads.

The Original Table

To get there, I had to start at the beginning. In Genesis, God made a garden. In the middle of that garden he put a tree. It was called the tree of life. And eating from it meant something very specific: ongoing access to life itself. Not a one-time transaction. A daily returning to the source.

The design was that humanity would live in that garden, near that tree, in an ongoing relationship with the God who put it there. Not religion. Not performance. Relationship.

And then something went wrong. They chose the other tree. And God, in one of the most tender and painful moments in all of Scripture, sent them out. He put angels with a flaming sword to guard the way back. The table was closed. Not forever. But it was closed.

And the hunger that had always been designed to be fed at that tree suddenly had nowhere to go.

What the Manna Couldn’t Do

Centuries later, Israel is wandering in the wilderness. They’re hungry. And God provides. Every morning, six days a week, bread from heaven covers the ground. The people call it manna. Literally saying what is it?

It was real. It was grace. God fed a nation in a desert for forty years. That is not nothing.

But it wasn’t the tree of life. Every morning the hunger came back. The manna could sustain life for the day. It could not give back what had been lost in the garden.

Daily provision is not the same as permanent restoration.

This matters for us. Because most of what we reach for to feed the unnamed hunger is some version of manna. Real. Good, even. But temporary. The career, the relationship, the achievement, the milestone. They satisfy for a season. And then the hunger comes back. And we wonder what’s wrong with us.

Nothing is wrong with you. You were designed for something the manna can’t give.

The Wrong Question

In the passage, the crowd that has followed Jesus is pushing back. They want a task list. They say: “what must we do to be doing the works of God?” Give us the religious performance. Tell us how to earn this.

And Jesus collapses the whole task list into one word: believe. Not perform. Believe.

This makes most people uncomfortable – myself included, honestly. Because a task list gives you control. If I perform well enough, I have leverage. Belief requires surrender. It means letting go of the idea that you can make yourself worthy of what’s on the table.

Most of us secretly prefer the task list. But belief is the only door there is.

Eating Once vs. Eating Again

Here’s the part of Sunday’s message that I couldn’t stop thinking about. There’s a verb shift in John 6 that most English translations completely flatten. And it changes everything.

When Jesus first talks about eating his flesh, he uses the Greek word phago. It’s the standard word for eating. Often used for a one-time act. The ancestors ate the manna. Phago. Past tense, done.

But starting in verse 54, he switches to a different word: trogo. It means to gnaw, to chew, to feed with deliberate enjoyment. And it appears as a present participle, which in Greek means: continuously, habitually, repeatedly.

The one who keeps eating. Not the one who ate once. The one who keeps coming back.

This is the contrast Jesus builds in verse 58: your ancestors ate the manna (phago – once, past, done) and they died. Whoever continuously eats this bread (trogo – ongoing, habitual, returning) will live forever.

He is not offering a single decisive bite that locks in eternal life like a cosmic transaction.He is offering a person. A relationship. A continuous, returning, ongoing feeding from the one who is himself the source of life.

The tree of life in the garden operated on one-time logic. One bite. Permanent consequence. That’s why God had to prevent it.

Jesus offers something better than the tree of life ever did. He offers himself. And you don’t eat once and stop being hungry. You come back. You come back again. That is what you were made for.

The Door That Cannot Close

Here is the part I wanted to say slowly.

In verse 37, Jesus says something I had to sit with. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

That phrase, I will never cast out, is ou me ekbalo in Greek. It is a double negative. Which means it is the strongest negation the Greek language is capable of producing. Not unlikely. Not rarely. Categorically impossible.

I will absolutely never, under any circumstances, for any reason, cast out anyone who comes to me.

The cherubim guarded the way back to the tree of life. The sword was real. The barrier was real. For a long time, that table was closed.

But the table is open now. And the door cannot be shut against anyone who comes to it.

That is for the person who drove to the parking lot and couldn’t make themselves walk in. For the person reading this who thinks they’ve done too much, been away too long, wandered too far. For the person carrying something they haven’t told anyone and think disqualifies them from what God is offering.

Ou me ekbalo. The strongest negation available. Nothing you have done can undo what he did.

Keep Coming Back

Here’s the landing.

In the beginning, God set a table. A tree in the middle of a garden. Ongoing access to the source of life. Humanity and God together, eating, abiding, living.

The table was closed. The sword went up. And for a long time there was provision, real provision, but not restoration. Not the full return.

And then Jesus comes. And he says: I am the bread of life. I am what the tree was pointing toward. I am the source, in person, in the flesh, inviting you to come and keep coming.

And then he goes to a cross. And the cross is where the sword falls. It falls on him. Everything that made the table inaccessible, every weight of the brokenness that barred the way back, came down on the one who is himself the bread of life.

He was broken so you could be fed.

When Peter is asked if he’s leaving with the crowd that walks away, he says: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

That is honest faith. Not: I have it figured out. Not: I’ve resolved all my questions. Just: there is nowhere else to go. And I know it.

That’s the trogo posture. Not one decisive moment. A life of returning. Again and again, because you know where the source is and you know there is no substitute for it.

The table is open. Whatever you’re carrying, come to it.

You’re Not Actually Hungry for What You Think You’re Hungry For

May 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

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 suddenly the math stops mattering.

But here’s the thing I’ve been sitting with lately: most of us are walking around with that same irrational hunger all the time. Just not for food. We’re hungry for something. We’re just not always sure what it is. And we keep trying to fill it with things that don’t actually work.

The Cracker Problem

This Sunday I was preaching through a passage in John’s gospel where Jesus makes one of the most audacious statements in human history. He says: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.”

I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that when most people hear that, they either nod politely or quietly wonder if it’s actually true. Because most of us have tried the “Jesus thing” at some point and still ended up hungry. Still ended up tired, or lonely, or empty, or anxious, or chasing something we couldn’t quite name.

So either Jesus is wrong, or we’ve been eating the wrong thing.

I think it’s usually the second one.

We come to Jesus asking for crackers – quick fixes, parking spots, a way out of the thing we’re in – and then we’re surprised when we’re hungry again an hour later. Crackers do that. Bread doesn’t.

What Hunger Actually Feels Like

It shows up in a lot of different ways. Maybe it’s the thing you check first thing in the morning. Is it your phone, your email, the number in your bank account? Maybe it’s the credential you’re chasing, the relationship you’re trying to hold together, the approval you’re still waiting on from someone who may never give it.

Maybe it’s more subtle than that. Maybe it’s just a low-grade restlessness you can’t shake. A feeling that something’s missing but you can’t quite locate it.

You know that feeling? That’s hunger. Not the Snickers-bar kind. The deeper kind.

Augustine, a guy who spent a good chunk of his life trying to fill that void with all the wrong things before becoming one of history’s most important Christian writers, put it this way: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” He was talking to God. And he knew from personal experience what it felt like to try everything else first.

The Difference Between Crackers and Bread

In the passage I was preaching from, Jesus has just done something remarkable. He fed over 10,000 people with a little boy’s lunch. Five small loaves and two fish. The crowd is amazed. They follow him across the lake. They want more.

And Jesus essentially says: I know why you’re here. You’re here because I fed you yesterday. You’re not here because you believe anything about who I am. You just want more food.

Then he says something that reframes the whole thing. The bread your ancestors ate in the wilderness. You know the miraculous manna, the daily provision. They ate it and they died. I’m offering you bread that leads to a different kind of life entirely.

The crackers are anything that gives you a temporary hit of what you want and sometimes need in the moment. The bread is the thing that actually satisfies.

A promotion can feel like bread. So can a new relationship, a fresh start, a better city, a cleaner diet, a fuller inbox, a bigger platform. And none of those things are bad. But they’re crackers. They work for a while and then you’re hungry again.

The claim Jesus is making is that he’s different in kind, not just in degree. Not just a better cracker. Actually bread. The sustaining kind.

The Part That Costs Something

Here’s the part of Sunday’s message I couldn’t get away from. To illustrate what he means by “bread of life,” Jesus uses the image of wheat. Wheat berries straight off the stalk are kind of gross. I know I grew up chewing them as a kid with my grandpa. You can do it, but it’s not exactly a meal. And it’s not really all that tasty either.

You know how grain becomes bread? It gets plucked, sifted, pounded, ground down, beaten, and baked.

Not long after Jesus called himself the bread of life, he was arrested, beaten, tortured, and killed. The same language. The same process. Ground down to nothing and placed in a grave.

And then, just like bread rising, he didn’t stay there. He rose.

I’m not asking you to believe that right now if you don’t. But I’m pointing at it because it matters for the claim. Jesus isn’t just offering a philosophy or a set of principles that might help with the hunger. He’s saying he went through something on your behalf so that the hunger could actually be answered.

So What Are You Hungry For?

Genuinely. Not the Sunday school answer, not the polished version. What’s the thing you keep reaching for that never quite satisfies? What’s the void you’ve been trying to fill with crackers?

I’m not going to tell you Jesus is a magic fix for your specific situation. He’s not a slot machine. Believing in him doesn’t mean your marriage gets easier, your diagnosis goes away, or your finances sort themselves out.

What it means is that underneath all of those things, there’s a hunger that those things can’t touch. And there’s a claim on the table that says that hunger has an answer.

Stop turning to creation to fill the void that only the Creator can fill.

I don’t know where you’re at with any of this. Maybe you’ve believed it for years and you’re still working out what it means. Maybe you’ve never given it a serious thought. Maybe you had a bad experience with church and you’re reading this with one eyebrow raised.

All of that is fair. But I’d rather you sit with the honest question than walk away with a polite nod.

What are you hungry for? And is what you’re eating actually working?

Stewardship Means Structure (Part 2): The Final 3 Moves We Can’t Ignore

May 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

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.

4. Activate Synod and District Resources (Beyond Just Two Lanes)

If we’re being honest, maybe even a little optimistically honest, we have to admit that at best we’ve put most of our energy into two categories:

  • Church planting
  • Church revitalization

Both matter. Both are needed. But they are not the whole picture.

There are dozens of congregations sitting in the middle:

  • Not healthy enough to plant
  • Not dying fast enough to trigger revitalization
  • But absolutely in need of intentional direction and support

And too often… they get neither.

What If We Broadened the Strategy?

What if we leveraged existing district and synod resources to:

  • Strengthen already healthy, growing churches so they can multiply impact
  • Support partnership models between congregations
  • Guide mergers, adoptions, and multi-site expressions
  • Help churches reimagine facility usage and community engagement

Not everything fits neatly into “plant” or “revitalize.” And if that’s all we fund, that’s all we’ll get.

Let’s Be Clear About What This Is (and Is Not)

This is not about:

  • Traditional vs. contemporary worship
  • Liturgical vs. non-liturgical styles
  • Personal preferences or ministry flavor

This is about viability:

  • Financial sustainability
  • Leadership capacity
  • Property stewardship
  • Missional effectiveness

Those are the real issues that need to be addressed.

And One More Thing We Need to Say Out Loud

Yes, Jesus is Lord of the Church. Absolutely. That is not a question at all.

But that doesn’t mean every local expression of the Church will remain open forever. Perhaps a better way to look at it is the difference between Church and local congregations.

The Church remains forever, but congregations have closed before. And they will close again.

Not because Jesus failed, but because missions shift, communities change, and stewardship matters.

Faithfulness is not measured by how long a building stays open. It’s measured by whether we’re aligned with the mission of making disciples.

5. Fund Strategy, Not Just Survival

We need to rethink how we use money. Because right now, too often, funding decisions are driven by one question:

“How do we help this congregation stay open a little longer?”

That’s not strategy. That’s delay. What if we asked instead:

“Where will this investment lead to actual Gospel impact?”

That changes everything.

What Strategic Funding Could Look Like

  • Investing in churches that are actively reaching their communities
  • Supporting leadership teams that are intentionally discipling people
  • Funding partnership efforts that multiply impact
  • Providing grants for mergers, relaunches, or replanting efforts
  • Backing churches willing to try something different for the sake of the mission

This isn’t about favoritism. It’s about fruitfulness.

Look. Pouring resources into a model that isn’t producing disciples isn’t generosity. It’s poor stewardship.

At some point, we have to stop resourcing what was…and start investing in what could be or maybe better yet what should be!

6. Measure What Actually Matters (Not Just Attendance)

If we’re serious about stewardship, then we have to get serious about metrics. Because what we measure shapes what we value. And for too long, the primary metric has been simple:

“How many people showed up?”

Sure attendance matters. But it’s not the mission.

The Mission Is Clear

Jesus didn’t say: “Go and gather crowds.”

He said: “Go therefore and make disciples…” (Matthew 28:19, ESV)

That’s the target. So the question becomes: Are we measuring that?

When discipleship is happening, you should see a pattern:

  • Worship attendance grows →
  • Bible engagement deepens →
  • More people begin serving →
  • More people invite others and talk about Jesus →
  • New people come – and the cycle continues

If one grows but the others don’t, then something is off. And there’s a health issue that needs to be addressed.

Because discipleship isn’t a single metric. It’s a movement.

This is far from a “butts in seats” issue. It’s a discipleship issue. You can grow attendance and still be shallow. You can maintain membership and still be stagnant.

But when you make disciples? Everything else begins to move.

What Needs to Change

  • Track engagement, not just attendance
  • Measure serving and participation, not just presence
  • Celebrate life change, not just numbers
  • Ask regularly: Are we actually making disciples?

Because that’s the one thing Jesus explicitly told His Church to do. It’s about making disciples, not assembling crowds for an hour on a Sunday.

Let’s Wrap This Up

If we’re going to take stewardship seriously, then we have to align:

  • Our resources with mission
  • Our structures with reality
  • Our metrics with discipleship

This isn’t about tweaking the system. It’s about re-centering the mission.

And that’s going to take:

  • Broader thinking
  • Braver decisions
  • And a willingness to let go of what no longer serves the Gospel

Not because we don’t care about the Church, but because we care too much to lose what’s most important.

Stewardship Means Structure: 3 Moves We Can Make Right Now

April 29, 2026 / / 1 Comment

If we’re serious about moving from calling out the problem to actually changing the trajectory, then we need to get practical.

Not someday.
Not when things get worse.
Now.

In the last post, I outlined six pathways forward. Let’s take the first three and press into what they actually look like on the ground because if we don’t define them, they’ll stay ideas instead of action.

1. Deploy Real Transition Teams (Not Just Advice. Actual Help)

Right now, when a church starts to struggle, the “support system” often looks like this:

  • A meeting or two
  • Some general encouragement
  • Maybe a suggestion or two

And then… they’re largely on their own.

That’s not enough.

What a Transition Team Could Actually Look Like

Imagine instead a designated transition team that walks with a congregation for a defined season (6-18 months for starters). This team would be made up of:

  • A seasoned pastor with revitalization or merger experience
  • A trained lay leader (governance, finance, or organizational leadership)
  • A district representative who knows available resources and processes
  • A facilitator/coach who can lead hard conversations without emotional entanglement

This isn’t a task force that decides things. It’s a team that guides, clarifies, and moves the process forward.

What They Would Do

  • Conduct a real assessment of congregational health (not just attendance numbers)
  • Lead structured conversations with leadership and members
  • Lay out clear pathways: revitalization, partnership, merger, or closure
  • Help create a timeline with actual next steps
  • Keep the mission front and center when emotions run high

The Reality We’re Ignoring

We already have people who could do this. Within the district and synod structure, there are:

  • Circuit visitors
  • District presidents and vice presidents
  • Mission and ministry staff
  • Experienced pastors who have navigated these waters before

The issue isn’t a lack of people. It’s a lack of intentional deployment.

What if instead of waiting for churches to hit crisis mode these teams were proactively assigned when early warning signs appeared?

That’s not control. That’s care.

2. Normalize and Resource Church-to-Church Partnerships

This one is HUGE.

And honestly, it exposes something deeper in us. Because the resistance here isn’t logistical. It’s personal.

We like “our church.”
Our programs.
Our people.
Our traditions.

But the mission has never been about ours. Jesus even said he came to seek and to save the lost – disconnected – not here yet ones.

The Current Reality

In the same community, you’ll often find:

  • Multiple churches running under-resourced ministries
  • Multiple VBS programs competing for the same handful of kids
  • Multiple part-time staff stretched thin
  • Multiple congregations quietly declining separately

And we call that independence. But it’s often just inefficiency.

What Partnership Could Actually Look Like

  • Shared staffing
    • One pastor across multiple congregations
    • Shared Directors of Christian Education or Family Life
    • Joint outreach coordinators
  • Shared ministry efforts
    • One strong, community-wide VBS instead of five struggling ones
    • Combined youth groups
    • Joint outreach events that actually reach critical mass
  • Adoptive relationships
    • A healthier church helping lead and support a smaller one
    • Multi-site or campus models where it makes sense

Let’s Be Blunt

There is no Kingdom reason for five churches in one town to each run a half-effective ministry when together they could create something far stronger.

Sometimes our desire to “have our piece” of ministry is less about mission and more about control.

But if the Gospel is the goal, then collaboration isn’t optional. It’s essential.

What Needs to Change

We don’t just need permission for partnership.

We need active encouragement and resourcing:

  • Clear frameworks for how to share staff legally and financially
  • Templates for partnership agreements
  • Coaching for leaders navigating shared ministry
  • Stories that normalize this as wise, not desperate

Because right now, too many churches think partnership means failure. In reality, it might be the most faithful step forward.

3. Build a Best Practices Playbook for Hard Conversations

Look. I get it. Most churches don’t avoid hard decisions because they don’t care. They avoid them because they don’t know how to navigate them.

So they stall.
Or they argue.
Or they pretend things are fine.

The Questions We’re Avoiding

  • When is it time to seriously consider merging or even closing?
  • What does faithfulness look like in decline?
  • How do we honor the past without being held hostage by it?
  • Who actually gets to make these decisions and how?
  • What happens to the building, the money, the legacy?

These are heavy questions. And without guidance, they can feel overwhelming.

What a Playbook Could and Maybe Should Include

First, it is not a theological essay. It should be a practical, step-by-step guide:

1. Discernment Phase

  • Key indicators that change is necessary
  • Assessment tools (attendance across more than just worship, ministry engagement, financial health, community reach)
  • Questions every leadership team must wrestle with

2. Conversation Phase

  • How to structure congregational meetings
  • How to handle conflict and emotional responses
  • How to communicate clearly without causing panic

3. Decision Pathways

  • What revitalization actually requires
  • What partnership looks like in practice
  • What a healthy merger process entails
  • What faithful closure looks like (yes, that too)

4. Practical Logistics

  • Legal and constitutional considerations
  • Financial processes
  • Property decisions
  • Denominational procedures

5. Pastoral Care

  • Caring for members through grief and change
  • Honoring the legacy of a congregation
  • Keeping the Gospel central through every step

Why This Matters

Right now, every church feels like they’re reinventing the wheel. They don’t have to. We already have the experience. We already have the stories. We just haven’t organized them into something usable.

And until we do, churches will keep defaulting to inaction because inaction feels safer than the unknown.

Final Thought

None of this requires a theological shift. Our very theological identity and synodical polity actually allow and even was built for this! It just requires a structural and cultural shift.

  • Deploy people we already have
  • Work together instead of apart (anyone know what synod actually means)
  • Equip churches to face reality with clarity and courage

This is what stewardship looks like.

Not just naming the problem. But building pathways forward that churches can actually walk.

Next week, we’ll tackle the final three:

  • Activating synod and district resources more effectively
  • Funding strategy instead of survival
  • And telling better stories that redefine what success really looks like

I firmly believe we’re not done. Not even close!

A Few Weeks After Easter

April 28, 2026 / / 0 Comments

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 know the feeling. While my ministry now isn’t this way, it wasn’t too long ago that I had to listen to my own advice – which is why I’m sharing this with you today.

Easter Sunday is one of the best days of the year to be in ministry. Busy but the best kind of busy!

The room is full. Not just full, but full-full. Cars wrapping around the lot. Extra chairs in the aisles. Don’t tell the fire inspector. Familiar faces you haven’t seen in months sitting next to guests you’ve never met. The music is faster, a little louder, and the singing…wow the singing is on point. There’s this moment, usually somewhere in the opening hymn, where you can actually feel it. The room comes alive. It seems like everyone brought someone. Everyone is leaning in. And you’re standing up front thinking, now this is why I do this.

I’ve had those mornings. They’re real, and they’re genuinely good.

And then two or three weeks pass.

The lot has open spots again. The second row is half empty. The singing is…well, it’s fine. It’s your people. But it’s noticeably quieter than it was. The energy that felt almost electric three weeks ago has settled back into something more familiar, more ordinary. Normal.

Nobody warns you about the whiplash. This is not taught in any seminary class that I took.

I’m not talking about the numbers. I mean the feeling. The emotional and spiritual disorientation that comes from going, in the span of a few weeks, from the highest-energy Sunday of the year to what feels like the congregation just sort of… exhaled. Ministry leaders don’t always have language for it. It doesn’t feel like grief exactly, but it’s in that neighborhood. It doesn’t feel like discouragement exactly, but it can get there fast if you’re not careful.

Here’s what makes it harder: you can’t really talk about it. I mean seriously you can’t stand up on a Sunday in May and say “Hey, it felt way better in here three weeks ago.” You can’t let your team see you struggling with it because the room that’s in front of you is full of real people with real lives, and they need you present, not pining for a different version of the room. So you tuck it away. You preach as well as you can. You shake hands at the door. And somewhere underneath all of that, you’re quietly wrestling with something you can’t quite name.

I want to name it. Because I think a lot of ministry leaders carry this alone, and they don’t need to.

A few things that have helped me:

Remember what Easter actually measures. Easter attendance is a snapshot of curiosity and relationship, not a ceiling or a floor. The people who came because a family member invited them…that’s not nothing. That’s a door cracking open. The question isn’t why didn’t they come back, it’s what are we doing the other 51 Sundays that makes it worth coming back to? Easter doesn’t set the ceiling. It shows you what’s possible.

Name the thing to yourself. You don’t have to perform resilience. If the drop hits you then let it hit you, name it for what it is, and don’t spiritualize it into something it’s not. The emotional weight of caring deeply about a room full of people in need of the good news of Jesus is not a weakness. It’s actually evidence that you’re the right person for the job.

Anchor to the people in the room. One of the disciplines I keep coming back to is to stop looking at what’s missing and look at who’s there. There are people in your congregation on a random Sunday in May who are holding things together by a thread. They’re navigating rocky marriages, diagnoses, doubts and they showed up anyway. That room is not a consolation prize. It’s a gift.

Stay connected to your why, not your how many. The “how many” will fluctuate for your entire ministry. It always has. It always will. The leaders who make it to the long end of this work are almost always the ones who found something deeper than merely attendance metrics to stand on. Not because numbers don’t matter, because they do, but because numbers alone will eat you alive if you let them.

This one’s for the leaders who had a great Easter and then felt strangely quiet about it two weeks later. You’re not alone in that. And the ordinary Sunday in front of you? It matters more than it feels like it does right now. I think Mordecai’s words to Esther belong to all of us who get caught up in last week instead of loving the people in front of us this week. You were placed here for such a time as this.

The Right Side of the Boat

April 20, 2026 / / 0 Comments

There’s a moment most people hit eventually.

You’ve been grinding. Showing up. Doing what you know how to do.

And it’s not working.

Not a little slow. Nothing. No traction. No payoff. Just effort disappearing into the dark.

That’s where this story starts.

A group of guys go out to fish, something they’ve done their whole lives. This isn’t new territory. This is their lane. And still… all night, nothing.

Empty.

If you’ve ever worked hard at something and watched it go nowhere, you already understand the scene.

Then morning comes. And from the shoreline, someone calls out:

“Catch anything?”

Nope.

“Try the right side of the boat.”

That’s it. No explanation. No credentials. Just a voice suggesting a small adjustment.

And somehow they listen.

That’s the part that should catch you. These aren’t amateurs. They know what they’re doing. But after a long night of getting nowhere, they still have enough humility left to try something different.

So they move the nets. And everything changes.

Suddenly more fish than they can handle. The kind of result that makes you stop and realize this is not luck.

Here’s the tension we need to feel. Most people don’t get stuck because they’re lazy.

They get stuck because they’re locked in.

Same habits. Same patterns. Same approach. Over and over again.

We call it consistency. Sometimes it’s just resistance to change.

Because these kind of adjustments feel small. It feels almost too simple to matter.

But that’s usually where the shift happens.

Not in some massive overhaul, but in a decision to listen when something, or someone, cuts through the noise and says, “Try it this way.”

The story turns when one of them realizes who’s on the shore. It’s Jesus.

And one of the guys, Peter, doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t even think. He jumps straight into the water and heads to shore.

Because when something real shows up, you stop analyzing and start moving.

And when they get to shore, it’s not chaos. It’s calm. A fire’s already going. Food’s already cooking.

Here’s the twist: Jesus already has fish. He didn’t need theirs.

But he still tells them, “Bring some of what you caught.” That changes the whole angle.

This wasn’t about filling a gap. It wasn’t about proving themselves. It was an invitation.

Join me.

Be part of something.

That’s a different way to think about life. The pressure to perform, to produce, to make something happen. That’s heavy. But what if the point isn’t proving your worth?

What if it’s paying attention… and then responding?

So if you’ve been pushing hard and getting nowhere, maybe the answer isn’t more effort.

Maybe it’s a shift.

Listen again.

Try the other side.

It might not be about doing more.

It might be about doing something different and finally getting unstuck.

She Came for a Dead Man

April 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

It was still dark when Mary got there.

She wasn’t coming to celebrate. She wasn’t coming to see an empty tomb or meet a risen Savior. She was coming with spices and oils to do the final, heartbreaking work of honoring a dead body. She loved Jesus enough to show up in the dark to care for a corpse.

That’s where Easter actually begins.

Not with trumpets. Not with certainty. Not with bold faith.

With grief. With confusion. With someone just trying to do the next right thing in the dark.

When she found the stone rolled away, she didn’t think resurrection. She thought theft. That’s how shattered her expectations were. No category for hope. No framework for “He’s alive.” Just panic and pain.

And when she finally turned around and saw Jesus standing in the garden, she thought he was the gardener.

Let that sit for a second.

The same Jesus she followed. The same Jesus she listened to. The same Jesus she watched die.

Standing right in front of her… and she couldn’t see Him.

Because grief has a way of blinding you to what’s right in front of you.
Because sometimes what God is doing doesn’t fit what you expected Him to do.
Because resurrection rarely looks like what we thought it would.

And then he said her name.

“Mary.”

Just her name. The same voice. The same tone. The same way he’d always said it.

And everything broke open.

Not because she figured it out.
Not because she pieced the clues together.
Not because her faith was finally strong enough.

But because Jesus made it personal.

That’s the Easter story that doesn’t get preached enough.

We love the big moment. The victory. The empty tomb. The global impact. And all of that matters. But before any of that unfolds… there’s a quiet garden, a grieving woman, and a Savior who refuses to stay distant.

Before He appears to the eleven.
Before He sends the church.
Before the world changes…

He calls one person by name.

Because salvation isn’t just global.

It’s personal.

It always starts personal.

That’s why, in baptism, we don’t just say, “This one.” We ask for a name.

“How is this child to be named?”

Because this isn’t generic grace. This isn’t abstract forgiveness. This isn’t a vague promise floating out there for whoever might grab it.

This is Jesus, crucified and risen, looking at a specific person and saying: You.

“You are mine.”
“You are forgiven.”
“You are raised with me.”

That’s what He was doing in the garden.

And that’s what He’s still doing.

A lot of us are still standing in that same place Mary was.

Still carrying grief.
Still assuming the worst.
Still trying to make sense of a God who didn’t do what we thought He would do.
Still looking right at Him… and missing Him.

We come expecting silence.
We come expecting absence.
We come expecting a dead end.

But Easter says otherwise.

The stone is already rolled away.
The grave is already empty.
And the Savior you think is missing is closer than you realize.

You might not recognize Him right away.

You might still be stuck in the fog.

But don’t miss this:

He knows your name.

Not the version of you that you project.
Not the cleaned-up version you bring to church.
Not the highlight reel.

He knows you.

And He calls your name.

Through His Word.
Through the water.
Through the promise that hasn’t changed.

And when it finally clicks, when you hear Him, when it lands, when the fog lifts it’s not just a theological realization.

It’s a moment.

Everything breaks open.

Hope returns.
Grief loosens its grip.
And what felt like the end starts to look like the beginning.

Mary came looking for a dead man.

She got a living Savior who knew her name.

He knows yours too.

And He’s still calling it.

You Came for This… But What If There’s More?

March 30, 2026 / / 0 Comments

You ever go somewhere expecting one thing… and walk out with way more than you planned?

You run into a store for “just one thing”… and somehow leave with a full cart.
You order something simple… and they upgrade you for free.
You show up for a quick conversation… and it turns into something that actually changes you.

It’s unexpected.
Unplanned.
Better than what you came for.

But here’s the twist—most of us don’t actually like that feeling when it comes to life.

Because we want control.

We Like Clear Expectations

Most of us approach life—and even God—like a transaction.

“I’ll show up… if You do this.”
“I’ll believe… if this works out.”
“I’ll trust You… as long as it goes my way.”

We come in with a plan:

  • Fix this problem
  • Smooth out this relationship
  • Make life a little easier

And if we’re honest, we don’t want more…

We want specific.

That’s Exactly What Happened on Palm Sunday

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the crowd thought they knew what was happening.

This was their moment.

They waved palm branches like victory flags.
They shouted for rescue.
They believed Jesus was about to flip the system and make their lives better—fast.

They weren’t looking for a Savior.

They were looking for a solution.

Jesus Doesn’t Do “Just Enough”

Here’s where everything flips.

Jesus didn’t come to meet their expectations.

He came to exceed them—on a completely different level.

They wanted a leader to fix their situation.
He came to fix the root of everything broken.

They wanted freedom from Rome.
He came to bring freedom from sin, shame, and death itself.

They wanted a win they could see.

He brought a victory that would last forever.

The Problem? It Didn’t Look Like “More”

Because “more” didn’t feel better in the moment.

It looked like tension.
It looked like confusion.
It looked like a cross.

And that’s where this gets uncomfortably real.

Because we do the same thing.

When Life Doesn’t Go As Planned

You pray for clarity… and get silence.
You ask for relief… and things get harder.
You want a quick fix… and instead you’re in a process.

It’s easy to assume: This isn’t working.

But what if…

What if you didn’t get less?

What if you actually got more—just not in the way you expected?

The Kind of Faith That Changes You

Real faith isn’t about getting what you asked for.

It’s about trusting that what God is doing is bigger than what you asked for.

Even when:

  • It takes longer
  • It feels harder
  • It doesn’t make sense yet

Because sometimes the thing you wanted fixed…
is actually connected to something deeper that needs healed.

And Jesus doesn’t do surface-level.

So Here’s the Question

Are you open to more…

Or are you stuck on what you expected?

Because you can hold tightly to your version of how life should go…

Or you can trust that Jesus might be doing something better than you can currently see.

You might have come looking for a quick answer.

But what if He’s offering something deeper?
Something lasting?
Something that actually changes you?

Not less.

More.

Just not what you planned.

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