Church Posts

5 Resources from My Study Leave (That You Can Use)

5 Resources from My Study Leave (That You Can Use)

05 Sep , 2019 No Comments

I had the opportunity to spend the last four weeks experiencing a study leave. It wasn’t a vacation, but it allowed me the chance to break my normal rhythms and get away to think deeply and enjoy a time of allowing Jesus to recharge my batteries. I spent a few nights away by myself, read 19 books, prepared for the upcoming year at our church, and reflected a ton in the space this created.

I desire to be the type of pastor that Stanley Hauerwas describes when he says: “The faithful pastor keeps calling us back to God. In so doing, the pastor opens our imagination as a church, exposes us to a wider array of possibilities than we could have thought possible on our own.” A regular routine of rest is crucial to experiencing this.

In case you could use a little recharging yourself (and that’s all of us), here are five tools that proved beneficial for me this month:

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Top 20 Quotes From Leadership Summit (2019)

Top 20 Quotes From Leadership Summit (2019)

09 Aug , 2019 No Comments

This is part of a series of posts on 20 quotes. Click here to see others.

This was the second year we hosted the Global Leadership Summit at Abundant Life Church. Together with business and church leaders in our community, we spent the last two days growing and practicing being teachable.

Below I’ve selected twenty of my favorite quotes from the event. Each of these quotes is my best representation in writing of what they said verbally or a summary thereof. Any errors in wording are my own. These are in order of appearance at the conference, not in rank.

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The Response to My Sermon This Week

06 Aug , 2019 No Comments

I woke up Sunday morning to the news of another shooting. My social media timeline was filled with a variety of commentaries about the horrific murders in El Paso and Dayton. A wave of emotions flooded over me and I felt it all. Then I remembered that I had a sermon to preach that morning.

I began a conversation with Jesus asking a simple question: what am I supposed to say? I didn’t land at an easy answer to this question, even when I knew it was time to go on stage. I took a step forward at our 8:30am service and began to feel my way through it. Then I sat through our 10am service and I could feel more coming.

Toward the end of the message, I felt an invitation to let go and say what God was laying on my heart. I quickly lost control of my emotions and could feel my voice begin to quiver. I’m not a crier, so to cry in front of hundreds of people feels very raw to me.

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2019 Reading List – 2/4

2019 Reading List – 2/4

08 Jul , 2019 No Comments

We are halfway through 2019 by now. It’s a good time to reflect on how the year has gone so far and what you might want to do differently to finish it out more intentionally. It’s also a time for me to take stock of my reading so far this year.

Here are the books I’ve read since January with my rating for them (5 being the best) along with a brief review. Any book without a number rating has been given to me by the author or publisher. 

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Top 20 Quotes from Catalyst West 2019

Top 20 Quotes from Catalyst West 2019

05 Apr , 2019 No Comments

This is part of a series of posts on 20 quotes. Click here to see others.

I had the opportunity to attend the Catalyst West conference this week with some of the team from Abundant Life Church. Catalyst is a great shot in the arm of encouragement and connection with other church leaders. This year the focus seemed to be on our own soul care and it proved to be an amazing time of encouragement for our team.

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2019 Reading List – 1/4

2019 Reading List – 1/4

03 Apr , 2019 No Comments

We are a quarter of the way through 2019 by now and you have probably forgotten about those New Year’s resolutions. If not, now’s a good time to gauge your progress so far and make sure you are doing what you wanted to do this year. One of my goals was to read at least 60 books this year and so far I’ve read 16 of them. That puts me slightly ahead of pace.

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