Years ago I met with a pastor in my area who led a thriving church that he had planted the in 2003. At the time, it had grown from three families to 2,500 people in attendance.

He spent an hour sharing a lot of fantastic insights about casting vision, setting direction, and bringing people along on mission to reach the community.

But of all the insights he shared, one still sticks with me to this day. I want to share it with you:

"Tell your church what they are and eventually they’ll become that."

These words rang inside my head as he explained that his job as a pastor is to set the expectation high and let his church know he believes that’s who they are. Eventually, they will become that.

Great leaders set high expectations and truly believe their church is capable of meeting them.

I've found this to be true over and over again. In this episode, we will explore this concept and discover how to speak TO our church ABOUT our church to build the kind of church God is...

For more than a week, there has been an ongoing, unplanned revival on the campus of Asbury University in Kentucky.

It's been the talk of social media and thousands have even have made the trip to be part of it.

In this episode, I want to draw out three lessons that we, as pastors can learn from this historic event.

For the last several decades, attractional churches have reigned supreme. They've gone by different monikers. Sometimes known as seeker sensitive, modern, etc.

The idea in many of these churches, and in evangelicalism at large, has been to make sure churches are as user-friendly and approachable to outsiders as possible.

Nothing weird. Nothing awkward. That was the goal. And for good reason. The thought was, "Let's not make the gospel weird and scare away spiritual seekers."

Like most well-intentioned movements, there was an unintended consequence. Church became stale, predictable, and altogether forgettable. Many of these churches are experiences declining attendance patterns.

But, there is a church movement that is growing and has been for years now - not just in the US, but around the globe - charismatic churches.

In this episode, we're going to look into an article by Carey Nieuwhof in which he explains this phenomenon and some lessons we can learn from it.

Whether you are...

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Podcast by Christianity today has been the best podcast to come out in a long time. In it, host, Mike Cosper, profiles the story of Mark Driscoll who rose to prominence as the leader of Mars Hill Church, President of Acts 29 and a #1 New York Times Bestselling author.

The podcast holds nothing back in telling the story - the good and not so good parts of the journey and ultimate fall of Mark and his church.

Listening to this podcast has been a journey for me in itself. I admired Driscoll in my formative years of ministry. He was different, but in the end proved to be the same as so many pastors who have fallen.

From the first ten episodes of the podcast, I have drawn out three important lessons that I believe are important to share with you.

Hillsong Founder Brian Houston appeared on NBC's TODAY on Wednesday to discuss the fallout that has happened in Hillsong's NYC Campus following Carl Lentz's admitting to having affairs.

In this video, we explore lessons we can learn about how to protect against these kind of things from happening in our churches.

The YouVersion Bible App and BibleGateway have released their data showing 2020's most searched-for Bible terms and most-read verses. Unsurprisingly, "Do Not Fear" was the most-read verse with "Fear" being the most searched-term. I think there's a lot we can learn from this as we plan our sermon content for 2021. In this video, we'll explore the implications for us as church leaders.

John MacArthur holds services in defiance of local orders to not assemble. We examine all sides and draw out lessons for pastors. Thanks for watching!

John Crist released a statement on his Facebook page explaining his recovery process over the last 8 months. In it, we find many lessons for pastors and other public figures.

Andy Stanley just made an announcement that all North Point Ministries locations will not meet in person until at least January 2021.

Don Lemon was talking to Chris Cuomo recently on a CNN segment. He made some statements about what he thinks Christians believe about Jesus. I wanted to give comment to this because not only were his statements inaccurate biblically, but it's also not what Christians believe - like he claims. There are lessons for pastors in this because it shows how important it is to remind our people of our basic beliefs about Jesus that we might take for granted.