Follow Jesus. Lead the church. Change the world.
Over the last several months, I have enjoyed reading some books by Jon Gordon, including Training Camp, which I wrote about here. I also read and enjoyed The Energy Bus, which is about positive energy. Gordon contends … … positive people, positive communication, positive interactions, and positive work and team cultures produce positive results. Gordon … Read more
Recently, I read the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations by Nancy Duarte. The book brings together, and builds on, Nancy’s previous books, Slide:ology and Resonate, which I’ve blogged about extensively (this post includes links to the other seven posts in the series). I won’t repeat too much of the content from Resonate and Slide:ology, but … Read more
We had a nice, busy, and fast, summer. Early on, we went to York, Maine. Toward the end of the summer, we spent an afternoon at Greenwood Furnace. The kids enjoyed the rides at the Clearfield County Fair. And, just before the school year started, we spent a couple of days at the Pennsylvania Grand … Read more
The Church must have people with receptive hearts! In telling the parable of the soils, this is how Jesus described “good soil” … The seed scattered on good soil are those who hear the word and embrace it. They bear fruit, in one case a yield of thirty to one, in another case sixty to … Read more
There’s a myth that says, “Practice makes perfect.” But there’s also a fairly common rebuttal that says, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent.” Whether you are a musician, an athlete, a communicator, or whatever, just because you do something over and over doesn’t mean you’re getting better at it. You may simply be reinforcing … Read more
The Church needs to give up control and let God be in charge. It’s his Church after all. I read a prayer in The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson (see 5 Takeaways From “The Circle Maker”), which has stuck with me ever since I read it: “Lord, do something unpredictable and uncontrollable.” It’s a scary … Read more
The words awesome, incredible, amazing, and even life-changing can often be over-used to describe events or experiences. But I wouldn’t have a problem using these words to describe the 2013 Global Leadership Summit that took place in the last two days! The event was attended by more than 80,000 leaders across the US at more … Read more
Over the last few months, some words by the Apostle Paul have been shaping my thinking about preaching. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2.4-5 … My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I did this so that your faith might not … Read more
I recently wrote Rethinking Sermon Preparation where I talked about the nature of sermon preparation (God works on and in the preacher first so that the preacher can help hearers take a similar journey). This post is about finding your rhythm for sermon preparation. It’s easy to fall into a rut with sermon preparation. We … Read more
The area I’ve worked on the hardest in the past year is sermon preparation. It’s always a struggle to make time to prepare sermons because it’s hard work and there are plenty of other things to do! As I wrote in my post, Preaching Requires Investment, Bill Hybels has been quoted to say … Preaching … Read more