No leader or pastor starts their career or starts a church with thinking about quitting. All of them start with grand plans and dreams of the future and finishing, retiring, making it to the end with friends and family around them. Yet statistically that is incredibly rare. Most quit, give up, fall out of the…
Over the years of my study of spiritual warfare, I’ve talked with a number of pastors who fell morally. Here’s how I summarize their own confessions as they explain what happened: “I never thought it would happen to me.” I’ve yet to meet a pastor who planned to fall. I’m quite certain I never will, though…
One Sunday during March 1965, the worship service at our church in Baltimore, MD got out early. Great, I thought. That gives me more time to play with my friends in the church yard. At 14 years old that was a main focus of Sunday mornings. I had spent eight years developing some great friendships…
I’ll be honest. Self-care always ends up at the bottom of my to-do list. In fact, self-care has never been in my vocabulary. For most of my life, I’ve been a hard-charging, type-A, driven, ambitious person. But as I recently turned thirty, I began to realize that my body can’t hold up to my pace….
Grace seems easy. It’s grace, after all, right? But in reality, grace is really hard. What I mean is… We have a hard time receiving grace because we either feel that we’re too undeserving to have the undeserved favor of God, or that we’re okay and don’t really need it. We have a hard time giving grace for lots of reasons…
Leadership is really tough. Good leaders understand this and manage their lives and leadership demands to avoid burnout. Sometimes, however, even the best leaders get burned out. If you’re facing it now, examine the cause list below to see what factors may be contributing to it. Then, take one proactive step this week from the…
Every year at our Emotionally Healthy Leadership Conference I am asked: “How is supervision in an emotionally healthy church different? What makes it distinct?” In emotionally healthy teams, role expectations are openly talked about and agreed upon. We evaluate how we are doing. But that is not enough. How people care for their inner lives…
My name is David. And I’m a pastor who deals with bouts of depression. I don’t write as one who is specialized in the medical or psychological field, but as one who fights a personal battle while refusing to let others stand alone in theirs. My depression is considerably lower than others, and happens perhaps, less…
All-star Cleveland Cavalier Kyrie Irving once told the sports media that he believes the earth is flat. He insists he has done the research and has rejected the propaganda deployed against us to convince us that the earth is round. When asked about it, Lebron James responded, “Kyrie is my little brother. He’s my All-Star…
