3 Vital Questions for the Biblical Counselor

Ashley and her husband, Nate, met with me at church the day after their twin sons’ eleventh birthday. With tears streaming down her face, Ashley shared that twenty-five years earlier, not long after her eleventh birthday, a relative had begun sexually abusing her. Those who knew Ashley would have been […]


Pastors: How to Overcome Two Deadly Obstacles to Prayer

I want to examine two biblical obstacles to prayer, both of them drawn from the book of 1 Peter. My hope is that you can learn to dislodge these obstacles and overcome them so you will be empowered to pray more fruitfully for your people. Disobedience The first obstacle to […]


Pastors: Are You Brave Enough to Leave Your Cultural Comfort Zone?

Many majority culture believers say they want a multicultural church, but when you get down to it, they really don’t. They want a group of people of different races coming together to worship in their style. You might say they want a multicolored church, not a multicultural one. “Do you […]


4 Steps to a Meaningful Sabbath

All work — paid and unpaid — is good, but it needs to be boundaried by the practice of Sabbath. The problem with too many leaders is that we allow our work to trespass on every other area of life, disrupting the balanced rhythm of work and rest God created […]


A Sermon for Busy Pastors: Unexpected Lessons from an Unjust Servant

May this sermon help you improve the quality, freshness, and variety of your pulpit ministry, and better meet the spiritual needs of those in your congregation. Sermon Title: A Quality of Discipleship — Astuteness Text: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, […]


The Opposite of Discipleship Genius

Many skills make for an effective minister, but there is one without which everything else we do is useless: make disciples. Apart from that, all the money we raise, buildings we build, ministries we organize, sermons we preach and songs we write won’t move the mission forward. Without that one […]