I wrote this litany of healing several years ago. However, this year I have adapted it to be more directly applicable to the time of COVID and have included contemplative actions that encourage us to reflect on the healing power of God in the many ways it is expressed. I have found that the combination of prayers and actions like …
Glory
Glory. It’s a word in the Christian tradition that most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, skip right over. We sort of have a framework for what it means to “give glory to God,” which is akin to praise, honor, and worth, but apart from sing-song words, we don’t really know what to do with it — particularly when …
You Are a Soul: Crafting a Rhythm of Life
I started getting serious about soul care when things in my life started to change. Living in a new city, getting married, and having a child within 3 years is a lot of change in a short period of time! And over the next few years, not only did things in my personal life shift, but the church I pastored …
Dawn Settlement: A Vision of Church as a Business Ecosystem
I was sitting in a “yoga café” on a cold January morning in Ferguson, Missouri with two young men. One was Taylor McCall, whom I’m writing this book with, and another was Jonathan Tremaine Thomas. If the name Ferguson didn’t initially jump out at you, it has become what many now call the birthplace of the modern justice movement in …
Discerning Your Way Through 2021
How seriously will you follow Christ in 2021? 2020 is over and most of us are thinking about what we want to focus our own lives and those of our congregations in the coming year. It’s hard because looking ahead is almost as uncertain as looking back. We don’t know when we will be able to hold “normal” services again. …
Structuring for Movement Immersion
A 6-week Immersion in How Jesus Used the 4 Spaces of Belonging to Make & Multiply Disciples w/ JR Woodward & Eun Strawser About this Immersion Do you know if the life of your church helps to grow CONSUMERS or DISCIPLES? Have current church structures frustrated you? Are you looking for concrete and practical ways to multiply disciples that uses …
You Are a Soul: Vocational Health
Paul Tournier was a Swiss physician and is widely regarded as the most prominent Christian physician of the 20th century. He published over 20 books during his career and was a prominent and captivating public speaker. But what made Tournier unique was not his writing prowess or his charismatic speeches – it was the way he practiced his healing vocation. …
31 Days of Delight
We are invited to “delight yourself in the Lord” (Ps. 37:4a), but I have noticed that many Christians haven’t yet experienced God as actually “delightful.” The most enjoyable part of my entire life has been to discover new depths of the delightfulness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I would love to see others experience just how wonderful He …
Powerful Reflection
As church planters, we may easily get bogged down from the nitty gritty of shaping organizational structures and managing the great work of investing deeply into the individuals in our communities, but there is a key way of pausing in the midst of the work that actually aids in providing wisdom and insight into both our organizational structures and the …
Acknowledging Your Pain – Celebrating Blue Christmas
We are rapidly approaching the end of a year that, for many of us, has been the most challenging of our lives. We are all worn out and weary. A lot of us are ZOOMed out, Coronavirused out, and longing for peace. We’re all in different places and spaces, and all of our stories are unique, but we all share …