I love pastors. For the last couple years I didn’t serve as a pastor while I was leading At Leadership Network, but I landed back into an intentional interim role on February 1st. I am pastoring my home church for a season. While I thought I was here to redirect a few things and prepare…
God Uses Crisis for Good
Pastors, God will use this crisis for good. Joseph, eleventh son of Jacob, had a dream that his brothers and parents would someday bow before him. So Joseph shared his dream with his ten older brothers. Their disdain for their youngest sibling grew to the point of wanting to kill him, but his brother Reuben…
Mobilize Your Church to Reach Out During These Trying Times
No doubt, if you pastor a large church or are on its pastoral staff, you were already presented with the reality that groups larger than 200 people have been banned for the foreseeable future in some areas. Then more recently the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has moved to discourage meetings of fifty or more.…
Crisis Response: What’s Your Style?
Leaders: what is your method of crisis response? I love the leadership displayed during a scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” where George Bailey is about to leave for his honeymoon and panic struck the Building and Loan. As the president, he was forced to avert his plan, go back and save the company. He…
Does God’s Guidance Shows Us How to Lead?
Does God's guidance show us how to lead? I believe we can learn a lot about planting and pastoring by thinking about God's guidance. He prioritizes relationship over arrival. He prefers intimacy over efficiency. He loves trusting over rushing. and perhaps most difficult, he into mystery over simplicity. God's guidance often feels like going nowhere…
Church Planting in the Midst of Grief
Ten years ago, God called my husband Jon and I to plant a church. After three years of preparation and many long trips between our home in Ohio and where we wanted to plant in North Carolina, we started that journey. We were ready to love large and share the news of Jesus. But I…