As a youth minister, summer camp is a regular part of my life. Every year, we load up the church van and head into the middle of nowhere for a week of sleepless nights, camp food, sunburn, and ruthless competition. While I love all the craziness that comes with camp, there is one experience I…
Contemplative Movies for Lent
The season of Lent is a time for contemplation. The Ash Wednesday service in the Book of Common Prayer calls us to observe the season “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and alms-giving; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP 2019, pg. 544). In its call for self-examination and repentance, Lent…
Patrick
My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. And so begins the Confession of St. Patrick, a vivid, honest, and faithful account of what God had done in his life. It makes for great reading. About two years…
Ash Wednesday Excerpt: Giving Up
In Giving Up, I relate a moment from a particularly memorable Ash Wednesday. Other memories of this solemn service have been more somber, but none more soberly illustrates our ‘selfie culture’ or the need we have for this Lenten season that can draw us out of ourselves—if only we will let it. A few years ago,…
Interview: Matt Canlis of Godspeed
Matt Canlis wasn’t too different from most young ministers at the tail end of seminary. He was full of big ideas for big churches. But unlike most young ministers, he benefited from a mentoring word from Eugene Peterson, who counseled him to put off being swallowed up by the “American Church Machine” and discover a…
Interview: Arrabon
After the events in Charlottesville in August, I came across an article by Doug Paul of Missio Alliance with a catchy and convicting subtitle: “When a Generation of Church Planters Reach Only White People” In reviewing the book The Creative Class, Paul argues (persuasively) that in creating ‘hip’ church plants, many young pastors may be inadvertently…
The American Religious Landscape: A New Resource
The Public Religion Research Institute just released an invaluable new resource to help church leaders see what’s been happening across the American religious landscape. Their American Values Atlas is an up-to-date, representative dataset drawn from over 100,000 interviews conducted in 2016. The breadth of the data allows church leaders to target the responses of specific…
The Vital Role of the Small Church Leader
The mission of LeaderWorks is to help church leaders do their work. In that effort, James K.A. Smith and Tim Keller have blessed us richly with their recent conversation in Comment Magazine. Church leaders who have just begun their ministries, whether planting a church or leading a small congregation, often feel frustrated by a lack…
How Church Leaders Lead in Election Year Tensions
In the United States, we are enduring one of the longest (it seems) and mean-spirited (it is sure) election seasons imaginable. Politics is on everyone’s mind. I listened to a news story about a Dallas firm that had asked its employees to NOT discuss politics anymore around the ‘water cooler’. They were not trying to…
