September 29, 2017
pastoring of pastors

The Pastoring of Pastors: Comforted in Suffering To Comfort Others (Video Interview & FREE Resources)

Watch Video Interview Here!!! “We were made for community. It’s not a defect,” Pastor D shares candidly as he reflects on his own personal struggles with discouragement and depression. Do you remember when God first called you to train pastors? For some, it may have been a Damascus Road encounter … for others, it may have been a real need you experienced personally, as it was for Pastor D. In the painful desert seasons, Pastor D was surrounded by fellow pastors who took the time to walk alongside him in the healing process as he endured years of depression. Today, […]
September 27, 2017
mistress

MARRIAGE AND MINISTRY: Can Ministry Become a Mistress?

Do you: Spend more time doing the ministry instead of spending time with your wife? Find a huge percentage of your conversation with your wife to be about ministry? Retire to bed with ministry on your mind, and wake up with it still lingering? Are you more concerned with the problems of your church members, more than the problems ailing your family? find more satisfaction with your involvement at church so much so that you’d rather spend time there than with your wife and kids? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you may be at risk […]
September 25, 2017

The Dandelion Question

Posted originally on Leading with Questions. Reposted with kind permission from Bob Tiede. It all started with a dandelion in an alley in Calgary. A weed in the wrong place, it became the impetus for discovery that may eliminate much petroleum-based pollution.  The wonder is in the question that led to innovation. Most of us might merely pluck such an offending plant.  Some might plot a means to permanently eliminate such occurrences.  Kelcie Miller-Anderson, 15 at the time, simply wondered: “How it is that dandelions thrive where other plants do not?” Starting with her reframed question, Kelcie, now 22 and in […]
September 20, 2017
growth

Two Factors that are Killing Your Church’s Growth

by Aaron Buer blog reposted courtesy of Breeze. Here’s a question: Why is it that some churches grow and others don’t? In many cases, growing churches and stagnant churches look almost identical from the outside. Similar buildings. Similar worship style. Similar budgets. Similar locations. So what’s the difference? Why is it that some grow and others don’t? Something that I’ve noticed through interacting with different churches is that growing churches are typically structured differently than stagnant or declining churches. Growing churches either never had, or at some point shed their start-up structural configuration, while stagnant or declining churches were never […]
September 14, 2017
manage

Leading and Managing People in the Church

(Leading and Managing People in the Church is taken from Chapter 6 in Barry Voss’ Management for Church Leaders™ Volume #1 Training Manual, ©2010.) “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Luke 6:31 The Golden Rule.  It seems that we all know Luke 6:31 so well yet are unable to keep it most of the time. The church is a people business that is based upon relationships – with God and with each other.  Jesus taught us this principle so we might live in harmony with each other, and with God, and to demonstrate to the world […]
September 11, 2017

Diversity and Reconciliation in the Early Church

In this podcast, Drs. Darrell L. Bock and Michael Burer dialogue about the tensions of diversity and racial reconciliation in the age of the early church, focusing in on the very issues touched on in Paul’s letters. To listen to the podcast and read transcript in its entirety, click here.         Excerpt from transcript below. Darrell Bock: Welcome to the Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. Our topic, today, is reconciliation and diversity in the New Testament. We want to take a look at how the church was originally formed out of Jew and gentile, and […]