Spiritual Life and Leadership

Jennifer Ackerman, Director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching and the Director of the Ogilvie Instutute’s Micah Groups tells us all about Micah Groups in the interview.  What are Micah Groups?  Micah Groups are a way for spiritual leaders to grow in the integration of preaching, worship, and justice in their ministries.   THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Jennifer Ackerman is the D...

Jimm Greer is the Founder and President of UMTR2ME (pronounced “You matter to me”), an organization that provides hope, encouragement, and counseling to individuals who are struggling with thoughts of suicide. In this interview, Jimm shares his own story of struggling with mental health challenges and how those challenges led him to start UMTR2ME.   THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Jimm Greer is...

What does it mean to be God's beloved? How do we measure success as churches?  Generally, we measure success the same way the rest of society does:  How many people show up?  How big is your budget?  How does your facility look?  I’ve heard it refurred to as “bodies, bucks, and buildings.”  But is that how God measures success? The story of the Prodigal Son is a reminder that God doesn’t meas...

Journaling.  Ugh…  Some people love it.  Some people hate it.  Some people feel like they should be doing it because they’ve been told it will help them grow in their faith.  But writing about their thoughts and feelings in a diary just doesn’t work for them. Well, along comes Tracy Winchell to give all of the non-journalers a way to keep track of their inner life that will probably work much bett...

Mandy Smith, Lead Pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, has written a wonderful book titled, The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry , in which she shares about the ways our humanity and our weakness are actually a source of strength in our ministries.    Too often, we think we have to fit a particular ministry stereotype in order to experience succes...

Nate Landis knows youth ministry is not easy.  Especially in our Post-Christendom context.  But Nate Landis, President and Founder of Urban Youth Collaborative has created an incredibly effective way for churches to reach out to the next generation. Any kind of church. A young, hip, millennial congregation, or an aging Baby Boomer and beyond congregation.  In this episode, Nate Landis shares his p...

Cari Augusta is an elder at Westmorland Community Presbyterian Church, a small church in California’s agricultural Imperial Valley.  The town of Westmorland itself struggles with a lot of food insecurity (which happens when a family runs out of food before the next paycheck comes).  Last fall, this little church decided to do something about it.  Specifically, they started a food pantry that now s...

Is experiencing shalom at a James Taylor concert possible? Does God work only through people who are Christians?  Does God only show up when we’re doing explicitly Christian things?  Or can God be experienced anytime there is goodness and beauty and kindness? Personally, I think God can be experienced anytime, anywhere–even at a James Taylor concert!  In this episode, I reflect on the themes of br...

Ron Ovitt is the President and founder of Empower Ministry , which helps people grow into healthy Christians empowered for ministry in their lives.  For Ron, becoming a healthy follower of Jesus involves developing what he calls emotional resilience—the ability to bounce back from painful experiences in our lives.  In this episode, Ron explains what emotional resiliance involves and why it is so i...

Why is ministry harder than it used to be?  Church attendance is declining every year.  Fewer people than ever have even set foot in a church.  The church as an institution has far less influence in our society than it used to. Why is this?  What happened? The fact is we live in a Post-Christendom world.  Christendom is that part of the world and that part of world history in which Christianity wa...

Scott Schimmel started The You School several years ago to help kids make the transition into adulthood. He and his team help students, families, and others who are in times of transition work through five key questions: What do you believe in? Who are you becoming? What’s your mission? How are you going to contribute? Who do you belong to? This is a process of identity formation, which, when it c...

What do you if you’re leading a local congregation and you find out that a boy in your neighborhood has asthma because the landlord won’t fix the mold problem in his apartment building?  If you’re the pastors of Ebenezer Church in San Diego, you cancel your regular worship service, meet the congregation in front of the apartment building, and stage a protest until the landlord agrees to do the rig...

Why does it still surprise me to hear that a woman has been called to be the Senior Pastor of a church?  Why is there still a part of me that thinks ministry leadership is a man’s job?  Probably because the patriarchy of our culture has shaped me more deeply than I know. But, unlike me, God does not set limits on who is called to ministry leadership. In this episode, Tara Beth Leach, Senior Pastor...

Followers of Jesus need a framework for intentional spiritual growth. Consider what happens to a grapevine when it doesn’t have a trellis on which to grow.  I imagine that the vine just sort of lays on the ground and the grapes end up getting eaten by worms or bugs.  But when the vine has a trellis, the grapevine is able to bear much fruit. Likewise, we need a trellis for our lives if we are going...

Daniel So and Jeya So are both experienced church-planters and experienced coaches of church-planters. There was a time when you could start a new church simply by walking into a new part of town, knocking on doors to let people know about the new church, and within a few weeks there would be a hundred people or so–especially if they already belonged to that denomination or tradition.  But church-...

We live in an age of incredible change.  Traditional entertainment like TV is being replaced by streaming on-demand media.  Traditional stores are being replaced by online shopping.  Traditional churches are having a harder and harder time knowing where they fit in a culture that is so drastically different than it was fifty years ago. This is where Dwight Gibson and the way of exploration comes i...

What is neighborhood exegesis? One of the most eye-opening ideas for me over the last 10-15 years is the idea that God is already ahead of the church, out in the world, working through all kinds of people to bring healing and wholeness to the world. Lesslie Newbigin calls this idea “the previousness of the gospel.” The reason this idea meant so much to me was because it took the pressure off. As a...

Marcos Mujica, the President of Agrarian Craft , is a brilliant gardener and farmer.  But here’s the cool thing about Marcos. His farming is not just about farming. It’s about participating with God in the healing of this world. It’s about restoring shalom to the earth. It’s about transforming the world, broken by sin, into what God intended when God created the world. In this episode, we talk wit...

Uncommon Good is an experimental church bringing in the kingdom of God by bringing people together in "uncommon" ways. What happens when a group of church leaders stop asking “How do we get people to come to church?” And instead start asking, “How do we create spaces people want to be?” Today we hear from a team that has spent the last year wandering outside the church walls trying to an...

Brant Himes is the author of For a Better Worldliness: Abraham Kuyper, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Discipleship for the Common Good . Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life is an incredibly powerful story. The son of a German psychiatrist in an aristocratic family in the early 20th century, Bonhoeffer made the unlikely decision to study theology. In so doing, Bonhoeffer encountered a Jesus who revolutionized his...

Sin and shalom.  What's the connection? Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., describes sin as “culpable shalom-breaking.”  What does that mean?  In this episode of “Spiritual Life and Leadership,” Markus Watson discusses what sin is and what we should do about it. THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: To understand sin and shalom, we have to start at the beginning in Genesis. Shalom is a good word to descr...

The Ungiving Tree -- a parody of The Giving Tree-- is as simple and as profound as Shel Silverstein’s original. In this episode, Dwight Gibson reads to us The Ungiving Tree and reflects on the importance of sharing with the world the gifts that God has given us. THIS EPISODE’S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Dwight Gibson is the Chief Explorer with and organization called The Exploration Group . Dwight founde...

Ministry can be incredibly rewarding and it can be incredibly painful.  In this episode, DG Hollums, shares about his own painful experience in ministry.  But he doesn’t stop there.  DG Hollums also shares the steps he is taking to bring together an online community for those who have suffered in ministry.  Rather than becoming angry and cynical, DG is taking his experience of betrayal and hurt an...

The genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17 is so much more than a list of Jesus’ ancestors.  It is the beginning of the good news about Jesus.  Matthew does something quite extraordinary with the inclusion of the four women in the genealogy of Jesus–not because he included women, but because of who the women are.  Right from the beginning, Matthew makes it clear who is included in the story of Jesus...

Chapter 1 of Canoeing the Mountains by Tod Bolsinger is titled, “Seminary Didn’t Prepare Me for This!”  That is a great opening chapter title because that’s exactly how thousands of pastors feel. When I was in seminary we learned how to study and exegete the scriptures. We learned to read Hebrew and Greek. We learned systematic theology. We learned how to provide pastoral care for church members. ...