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One day while working in Ephesus, the apostle Paul dictated a letter to a terrifically dysfunctional church he had founded earlier. In it he underscores The Really Big Idea that Jesus had: the Capital “C” Church. He was so upset when he learned they were dragging each other into court and filing lawsuits against each other (among other things). He tests them with several “Don’t you know…?” questions: “Don’t you know you will actually judge the world in the end? Don’t you know

In his landmark book Corporate Lifecycles: How Organizations Grow and Die and What to Do about It, Dr. Ichak Adizes laid out organizations’ life stages on a Bell curve. According to Adizes, every phase has unique problems that must be solved. That’s normal; if you’re not having problems, you’re dead! But if a problem becomes chronic—or popping up in the wrong lifecycle—that’s serious. I cannot recommend this book enough…and it’s really not hard to translate these lifecycles

Last week my wife and I were having dinner with our small group when someone brought up a sermon they heard that had originally been given by a different pastor. I laughed and said that’s not atypical—especially in the internet era. Years ago I remember a woman telling me she had visited family in New York and heard a message in a church that sounded oddly familiar. When the pastor told a story about his kids, she realized it was a message that I had given months earlier…wi

Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on how complex the world—and human nature—is. And why that makes leadership a very challenging work. But first consider this: due to the complexities of human nature and interactive free will, God must be very, very clever to somehow take all of this somewhere…to a finished objective. A goal. As followers of Jesus, we believe—perhaps we have to believe—that God is ultimately building toward a preferred future. And so we partner with Him.