Some of you have heard my own leadership story.  For those who haven’t, here’s a short version.  In my first church planting attempt, right out of seminary, I thought that all I needed to do was to teach the Bible well and my tiny church would grow.  It didn’t. In my second church planting attempt […]

I received some pushback a while back regarding a couple of blogs I wrote about allowing pastors to lead their churches.  I argued that most churches which are actually making devoted followers of Christ out of the raw material of lost people have pastors who are expected to actually lead.  Actually leading means that these […]

You may have read a post I wrote recently entitled, Six things struggling pastors don’t need.  In it I defined struggling pastors as those who, by their own admission, are neither happy nor effective.   They are not having fun. They are not feeling successful. Their churches are not making new disciples. Here’s what I said […]

“Know thyself. If I knew myself I would run away.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  Self-awareness: conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires The elder who met me at the café was discouraged and confused. How could things have gone so wrong? The small, rural, congregation which he served had gone through a […]

Impartial juries. Fair-minded umpires. Faithful pastors. Some things are just expected aren’t they? Everybody expects pastors to be faithful. But what does Scripture actually say about faithfulness and pastors? We must be faithful to the Triune God Himself. It all starts here, of course. There is a sense in which pastors are professionals who work […]