Build His Church
Some months ago I was given a copy of Dr. Edward Klink’s (Hope EFC, Roscoe, IL) The Local Church – What It Is and Why It Matters. Klink’s brief book, along with a couple others, became a valuable resource for preaching on the importance of the church in this post-covid era. As…
When Youth Culture is a Foreign Culture
Three years ago, I felt old. And I was only 28. This reality came crashing down on me one evening when I met with a few high school students for a typical Bible study. During the normal game and hangout portion of the night, students asked if I wanted to…
2 Inroads To The Community and The Principles That Made Them Successful
Earlier this year I stopped at the entrance to the church driveway only to be greeted by one of the neighbors. It had been four years since I first met her and the relationship had grown significantly over that time. She reminded me that she had no desire to attend…
The Church Needs Spiritual Formation
How is it that such a seemingly innocuous term generates so much misunderstanding and concern? In conversations with ministry leaders and pastors, who boldly proclaim Christ, there has been confusion about discussing spiritual formation – using words like “fuzzy” or “squishy” or simply choosing to not address it at all.…
8 Essentials For Healthy Pastoral Ministry
What a privilege to work with pastors over the past 50 years! Initially, I knit my life together with fellow pastors for mutual support.In the last 10 years I have worked with pastors in EFCA East as the Pastor Support Director.I have observed many things that I wished I had…
A Simple Pattern For Discipleship
I have had the exact same conversation happen exactly the same way perhaps 30 or 40 times. It always starts the same way: ‘Jesus tells us every Christian to make disciples!’ Often the person out at breakfast with me heartily agrees, it is hard not to. But then all the…
Hitting Re-Pete When You Fail
I’ve learned a lot about failure through baseball, marriage, fatherhood, and ministry. In baseball, you can fail to get a hit 70% of the time and that’s considered success. But that constant failure can get inside your head and mess with you. It did for me my senior year of…
Is Humiliation A Prerequisite For Ministry?
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” It seems to me, and apparently to Tozer, that God has a habit of using people to do great things to advance His kingdom only after they have been humiliated…
Avoiding The Drift
“Therefore, let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall…” This is the warning the Apostle Paul gave the Church at Corinth, after he exhorted them not to follow the example of Israel’s behavior in the wilderness on their way to the promised land. He…
Getting Unstuck as a Teacher of God’s Word
I love to teach and preach. I am confident of my call to do it. I feel gifted to do it. I am certainly convinced of the importance of the work. But at different points, it feels like I have plateaued in effectiveness as a teacher of God’s Word. I…
Underappreciated Hope
The Underappreciated Effect of Hope Our family was recently spending time with some good friends at their farm. The farmer was almost done milking cows and needed help distracting his kids. He suggested I take all of the kids (7 boys including mine) and drive them out to the tree…
What Christmas Does To Us
Though most of the people we associate with know about the story of Christmas, many people have been seduced by an alternate Christmas. They have taken the liberty of reinventing Christmas so that it means whatever nice things they want it to mean. I suppose it is understandable that Christmas…
