Posts Tagged ‘Vitality’
How To Function With Few On The Floor
“My team is on the floor.” This is Gene Hackman’s line from an absolutely crucial scene in the movie Hoosiers. Do you know it? What a movie! It is based on the true story of a tiny town in Indiana going all the way to the state championship where they…well, let’s not spoil it. Wonderful…
Read MoreWhat The Vet Taught Me About Change
We recently changed vets for our dog, Owen, from a large, national chain to a small, private practice down along a country road. Owen had been having ongoing, unresolved ear infection issues and my wife and I felt it was time for a change. After just two visits with the new vet, Owen is a…
Read MoreThe 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. The disinclination to identify with…
Read More8 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 MoreIs 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 in some way. Moses led…
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