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The church has always struggled with the tension between evangelism and holiness. I have friends who say when it comes to evangelism, anything short of sin is fair. I think I like that! But we still need to remind the people we’re leading that if your non-Christian friends are influencing you more than you’re influencing them, it’s time to disentangle yourself. One caveat: if it’s coming out of a “holier-than-thou” approach, then you’re heading for trouble. Or as Jonathan Edw

Ernest Gordon was a Christian, author and former dean of Princeton Seminary who died a couple of decades ago. Gordon was the inspiration behind the movies Bridge Over the River Kwai and, just before he died, To End All Wars with Keifer Sutherland. He survived three years in one of the most wicked prisoner of war camps in Southeast Asia during WWII where an estimated 80,000 prisoners died of starvation, dysentery, malaria and torture while building a railroad…several hundred m

No one has lived life more decisively than Jesus. And if we are to lead like him, what does that say about us? Think about it: even prior to His incarnation and joining us carbon-based bipeds, we're told in Philippians 2 that His entering the human race was a decisive act of servant-love. He consciously emptied Himself to be born into the womb of a backwoods teenager and enter the world in a feeding trough for farm animals. In Luke we find the only childhood reference to Je

After years of working with churches, we’re finding that the Imagination element is typically the least exercised of the four critical elements of all healthy organizations (Integrity, Passion, Servanthood, & Imagination). Imagination has to do with an organization’s capacity for change and innovation. It’s the ability to wonder and interact with the question “What if…?” For leaders, imagination is easily choked by the overwhelming day-to-day routine and thought-consumptive