This Memorial Day: Honor to Whom Honor is Due
What is a society without a heroic dimension? Jean Baudrillard Happy Memorial Day. Today we remember - and we honor - the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and guardsmen, sacrifices made to keep us free and to free the victims of tyranny around the world. I can't think of this day without thinking of my grandfather, an American G.I. who was wounded in Nancy, France during the big push to Berlin in World War II;...
What Staff Pastors Need From Their Lead Pastors Part II: In Their Own Words
In my most recent blog on the subject of pastoral staffs, I listed 10 things that staff pastors hope to receive from their lead pastors. To read the full piece, click here, but those ten “treasures” are: 1. Be a pastor who leads, not a leader who pastors. 2. Respect: See me not as an employee, but as a minister. 3. Membership: Allow me to be a member of your pastoral leadership...
What Staff Pastors Need From Their Lead Pastors
Based on our conversations and research with pastors across America, here’s what staff pastors of all stripes say they need from their lead pastors. Pastor, why not bookmark this blog on your phone and then plan to take each staff member out for coffee and a conversation that will not only build a world class staff, but world class staff relationships. 1. Be a pastor who leads, not a leader who pastors. Be a...
It’s Time to Put God In His Place
Hear me out. It's time you and I put God in His place. It’s time we take him out of our self-sized, small-faith boxes and let Him be in our lives daily exactly who He is eternally and infinitely: it’s time to put God in His place in our lives. Consider the theology – the teaching about God’s person – contained in the sermon you preached (or heard) last Sunday. Did it faithfully, clearly -...
It’s Time For a Convert-sation.
All people are, by nature spiritual and relational: at our core, we are vertical (built to connect with God) and horizontal (built to connect with people). These realities are beautifully depicted by the vertical and horizontal beams of the Cross, and by Jesus’ definition of the two greatest commandments: to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We then are spiritual beings, formed for spiritual...
The Leader Who Stands
Is your leadership at a standstill? Has the mission been lost in the myriad needs of ministry? Here’s an energy prescription for your leadership and for helping your church or ministry rediscover its mission – an Rx that will enable you to stand strong as a leader for a lifetime of healthy and effective ministry. It comes from someone not known for his leadership, but instead for his ability to help a good leader become...
What’s Changed? Young Ministers & Pastoral Coaching
I recently met with a colleague and our conversation covered the usuals: where we are now, what we are doing in ministry and how it’s all going. He was intrigued to hear that I am a full-time pastoral coach and that I focus on Millennial ministers. The idea was completely foreign to him. “We didn’t need coaching when I began in ministry. What’s changed?” he asked me. To rephrase my friend’s challenge-question, he was saying,...
Post-Modern Missions & Eternity
A plague of post-modernism is sucking the breath out of the Great Commission in our day. And so, it is sucking the life out of the church of Jesus Christ. What was once the sacred and inviolable command of Jesus to be obeyed at all costs is now subject to the the throne of personal feelings and is defined by individual interpretation – “how do I feel about it?” I have had pastors tell me...
Why Pastoral Coaching?
"Why Journey Pastoral Coaching?" Five years ago, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God raised the alarm that the AG needed four thousand - 4000 - new ministers immediately. He stated that the AG pastorate was greying - the average age then was 58 years old - and young, trained and anointed ministers were needed immediately to step up into leadership. As a missionary and campus pastor who has worked with hundreds of churches,...© [2015] — Journey Pastoral Coaching