Life
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 known when I started…
Read MoreHitting 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 high school when I called…
Read MoreAvoiding 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 further affirmed the church: “Now…
Read MoreUnderappreciated 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 house on the golf cart.…
Read More5 Ways To Build A Ministry Of Encouragement
Sometimes, the most important things are the most obvious things. I learned a lot in seminary – how to interpret the Bible, how to preach and teach, loads of theology. I even learned some counseling skills and paradigms for youth ministry that have served me well. But the past few years, in the midst of…
Read More3 Causes of Depletion in Pastoral Ministry
I was in my stride, doing as much as I possibly could as efficiently as it could be done. There was nothing remaining on my to-do list and my inbox was empty. Sermons were prepped in advance and all was going smoothly. Then one night, when I was visiting a member in the hospital, one…
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