It’s a simple reality that we can easily forget: those places we are most comfortable are precisely the places we’re most likely to be disobedient. Am I comfortable in my marriage because things are going pretty good? I’m probably not listening for God to tell me how to love my spouse better. Am I comfortable in…
I can’t remember if it was Andy Stanley or Craig Groeschel (or maybe both) who said that the greatest danger to future success is present success. I couldn’t agree more. But I’ll take it a step further: great success in what God has called us to in the past is the greatest obstacle to discerning what…
As Jesus neared Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he sent two disciples ahead to a small village along the route, telling them to retrieve a donkey and her previously unridden colt they would find there. Anticipating that the owners would have some questions about what the disciples were doing, he instructed them to say “The Lord needs them”.…
I’ve been hearing this question a lot recently. It’s an old thought, this idea that all roads lead to God, but I suspect that The Shack movie has given it new life recently, with its implicit universalism. (For the record, I’m not an anti-Shackian…it had some excellent insights into God’s nature that are perfectly biblical.…
I attend a lot of meetings. And the thing is, I don’t mind most of them. I won’t call them a joy, but I wouldn’t call them a “necessary evil” either. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But…there are some meetings that really suck the life out of me. Please don’t hold one of…
Here are the two most important leadership truths I’ve learned since becoming a lead pastor: Culture eats vision for breakfast Vision without strategy creates a culture of apathy Culture eats vision for breakfast I don’t know who said it first, but I’ve heard it many times from different leadership thinkers…and I’ve thought about it constantly over the last…
We hear a lot about priorities these days and their importance in leading healthy lives. But as Greg McKeown points out in Essentialism, the concept of “priorities” (plural) is an oxymoron (you know, like “jumbo shrimp” or “a new classic”). For 500 years after its introduction to the English language, the word was always singular…
I’m not the first person to ever say this, and I’m confident that I won’t be the last, but here it is anyway: balance is a myth. More critically, it’s terribly misunderstood. As we talk about it in Christian circles, this elusive thing we call “balance” seems to mean everything in our lives getting equal…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted here, not because I haven’t been learning lots about leading a mega-church, but just because leading a mega-church is far more demanding and time-consuming than I could have ever anticipated. But as Coletta and I were talking this morning after a workout, I shared something I’ve come…
One of the clearest things I’ve been learning during my first few weeks here in a mega-church concerns the power of touch. I’m not talking about physical touch, though I do think there is great power in a quick, entirely chaste, touch on someone’s shoulder. I’m talking about the power of gently touching an idea…