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Category Archives: leadership
Shepherds and the Story—A Sermon about Elders
I’ve been thinking about how our understanding of elders and their roles as shepherds relates to the big picture, the story the church has been brought into by Jesus. With elders, as with many other parts of church life, it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Ecclesiology, leadership, Ministry, Practical Theology, Story, Theology
Tagged elders, narrative theology, shepherds, story
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I Just Wanna be a Sheep (Baaaa)—A Sermon on Receiving Shepherding
A couple of years ago a movie was released that I suppose a few have seen, although I have not and hopefully presume that not many of you have either. Indeed, it is astonishing that there was a market at … Continue reading
Posted in Church, Community, leadership, Ministry, Preaching, Sermon Manuscript
Tagged elders, pastoral care, shepherding
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Elders Part 2: Making Decisions about Making Decisions
Most of the time, when men become elders, they have very little idea of what things are going to be like. What should they expect in meetings? What’s expected from them outside of the meeting room? What kinds of questions are … Continue reading
Posted in Community, Ecclesiology, leadership, Practical Theology
Tagged church, ecclesiology, elders, elderships, leadership, meetings, shepherds
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Elders Part 1: The Value of Growing, Caring Shepherds
(Note: My faith tradition, the Churches of Christ, are organized into autonomous churches governed by multiple elders. In this series, I’m going to write some of my observations about how those elderships work, or don’t. If your faith tradition has … Continue reading
Posted in Church, Community, Discipleship, leadership
Tagged compassion, discipleship, elders, elderships, growth, leadership, pastoral care, shepherds
2 Comments
The Destructive Mentalities of a Disengaged Church
In this series of posts, I’ve been writing about the concept of church mentalities, and particularly the sorts of mentalities that need to be developed if the church is to be meaningfully engaged with the local community. As painful as … Continue reading
Posted in Church, Community Engagement, justice, leadership
Tagged Community Engagement, mentalities, service
5 Comments
Mentalities for a Church Engaging the Community
In part one of this series, I talked about how complicated it can be to develop a particular set of mentalities within the church. That’s not all that helpful without some concrete examples of what we mean by mentalities. The … Continue reading
Posted in Church, Community Engagement, Ecclesiology, justice, leadership
Tagged Community Engagement, mentalities, outreach
7 Comments
Developing Church Mentalities
Our church, like many others, is working to broaden its self-understanding, particularly in terms of how we engage the particular community we live in. We want to move from an internally-focused, isolated church to one that is at work transforming … Continue reading
Posted in Church, Community, Community Engagement, Ecclesiology, leadership
Tagged church leadership, Community Engagement, leadership, mentalities, outreach, strategy
1 Comment
A Thousand Single Chances
Seth Godin’s blog is one of my favorites. He does a great job of teasing out the marketing principles articulated in his books, and usually in a balanced and pithy style. Everybody has an off day though. Last week I … Continue reading
Excellence in Execution – The Perfect Style
Churches in the middle of making style choices and transitions sometimes skip over the biggest style question of all: Are we committed to the style of excellence? Whether you sing old songs or new songs, strike a high formal meditative … Continue reading
Deborah’s song
This afternoon, when I turned to today’s reading in Project 4:4, a very simple pair of lines in the song of Deborah and Barak caught my eye in a new way: That the leaders took the lead in Israel, that … Continue reading
Posted in Bible Study, Devotional, leadership, Ministry, Old Testament
Tagged Deborah, leadership, project 4:4
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