Cal Newport contends that “following your passion” is bad advice. Why? Because many interesting careers have complicated origin stories (13). It’s not just, “Hey, I loved doing this, and then found the perfect job which matched my love. Often, people stumble into a field. Being passionate about often takes time and mastery (17). Telling people…
"I don't have to feel guilty in my relationship with the Lord, because it's my relationship with God." An older, wiser pastor spoke those words to me while we ate lunch together a few months ago. He told me that in his church circles, other pastors constantly exhort one another to follow certain kinds of devotional…
Kem Meyer's book Less Chaos. Less Noise. teaches churches to communicate more effectively. Here are some reflections on the book. More choices does not mean more engagement. Response: dial back the volume (42). App: Send less emails, texts, etc. Make more phone calls! User experience is by far the best "advertisement" (52). App: Make things an awesome experience. Build culture of…
All Community Group Leaders have questions. But not all Group Leaders have the same questions. Rather than having to sit through training and hear answers to questions you're not asking, the Group Leader's Toolbox is a collection of resources that you can look through and find what's useful to you! The Format Each resource answers a common (or…
Spending time in God's Word is always beneficial. But sometimes you might feel like you just don't know what to do. You know you should read. You know you should pray. But how? What does a realistic plan look like? Here I want to give you a sample schedule for how to spend an hour in…
Larry Osborne wrote Sticky Teams to help pastors navigate the practical realities of leading, not just a spiritual organism, but also an organization. There's not much theology found in the book; it's a practical guide with seasoned wisdom sprinkled throughout. Model Don't Matter "Even the clearest vision, greatest innovations, and most stellar programs won't much of an…
"We can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not…
Ed Stetzer is the Southern Baptist church planting guru. Planting Missional Churches functions like a textbook for a seminary class on church planting. By missional, Stetzer means "doing mission right where you are" (19). For Stetzer, it means thinking like a missionary to our own American culture. A missional church then has a culture whereby it…
Alan Hirsch coined a lot of terminology to pretty say the same thing as every other church planting book ever written. Hirsch entitles his paradigm of ministry, "Apostolic Genius" (81) (I'm sure no pride influenced the name). Essentially Hirsch says that traditional church doesn't work anymore and what we need is church 2.0 which sounds…
Lincroft Bible Church can learn much about church planting in our own country by learning from the experience of global church planters. In their book, Global Church Planting, author Craig Ott and Gene Wilson thoroughly breakdown the task of church planting by providing "best practices" and "principles" for aspiring planters to follow. The first section gives the…