The Verse that Cured My Legalist Christian Beliefs
For many years, my in-ness or out-ness varied moment by moment…even second by second based on how well I performed the Legalist dance. That is until I ran into this verse and it got me all tied up in knots… “If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, […]
Why Christianity Fights Against Accountability
Do you know why churches struggle with accountability? How preachers can do all kinds of crazy stuff and go unchecked for years…it is because we took a page from worldly leadership. That’s why. There is no accountability in Washington.There seems to be little to no accountability in major corporations (could be wrong on that – […]
House Church & Flexibility to Follow the Spirit’s Lead
One of the things I love about house church is the ability to be flexible because the Spirit doesn’t move in a straight line. It is hard to turn a big ship but a small ship can be turned at a moment’s notice. When you organize “Big church” worship everything needs to be planned and […]
Discipling Your Own Kids – 3 Principles
If you disciple anyone, make sure to disciple your own kids. This is easy to overlook but absolutely essential. Unfortunately we created a discipleship pipeline for our children that doesn’t work. We act like it works but it doesn’t work to raise mature disciples. I am talking about the drop-off youth ministry hamster wheel. Not […]
Swiss Army Knife Discipleship: Don’t Overcomplicate It!
Simple is repeatable. Complex is not. Never forget it. If your process for making disciples has a million components that tries to fix every possible issue you have a model that starts and stops with you. No one will be able to pick it up and run with it. You want your approach to be […]
Take the Step – A God Story
Last year, I really wanted to do my first discipleship training group. I am not talking about a discipleship group but a day of training people to be a reproducible disciple maker. But I had a problem – I hadn’t ever done this before! That may not be a problem for you but with my […]
Planting a Church? Your Team May Not Be Who You Expect
When you believe God is calling you to plant a church it is natural to consider who might partner with you to make it happen. What is interesting is that if you made a list of the people you think would partner with you to do it, chances are few of them will actually make […]
The 4 P’s of Discipleship: Purpose, Principle, Practice and Process
Too often people learn that we do something because the Bible says to without any understanding of the biblical purpose and principles that are the foundation for the practice. This approach ends up with a lot of checklist Christians. All they heard was that you do what the Bible says and you are good. But […]
Faith Has A Gestation Period
“God is never late and rarely early.” – Dillon Burroughs Faith has a gestation period. Faith isn’t grown in a moment. It is grown over a lifetime of interacting with God, avoiding God, yelling at God, waiting on God, trusting God, distrusting God, and everything in between. Faith takes time. So give it time. Where […]
Accountability – The Thing We Need The Most That We Want the Least
There is that word – accountability! So many of us have seen accountability so abused that we cannot begin to imagine having accountability with another person. There was a movement that was big on accountability and a lot of abuse came out of uni-directional accountability rather than mutual accountability. Uni-directional accountability is when one person […]