Blog
This week, my wife, Marty, and I had the honor of attending a church planter's retreat sponsored by the Converge Northwest District and held at the beautiful Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center on the rugged Pacific coast in northern Oregon. Read on to discover just a small amount of what was seen and heard at that relaxed gathering. Maybe you and your church can learn from my observations.
This past week, two of my granddaughters, Adia and Kalanie, who play basketball for the Lynden, WA High School Lions, went with their team to the state tournament in Yakima, Washington. I listened on my laptop to their first game and cheered them on from a distance even though they lost to a tough team. Go Lions! And for the last few days, I have been thinking about what can be learned from basketball but applied to the church. Let me share with you some of the lessons in this blog. Read on to find out what I observed and learned summarized in seven lessons.
This week I'm camped out in a hotel room waiting for a Converge Church Planter Assessment Center to begin tomorrow morning. I'll be one of many assessors on a team to help the candidates discern God's will for their first or next ministry. The center will be assessing 10 couples over a three-and-a-half-day period. I'm a veteran assessment team member having served in seven of them a while back, and I've been looking forward to another go at it. As I reflect on beginning the experience again tomorrow, I want to share with you a major observation - a ministry assessment experience should be required for all seminary students. Here's why I say that.
It's planting season on the farms in the Midwest. I know that because God gave me the honor of pastoring a rural church in Nebraska. It was in a place where life and soil meet, and the people are wonderful. Remembering my experience there, I thought I'd share with my readers a few lessons I learned about the church while shepherding God's people, the sheep of His pasture.
What lessons can we learn about church leadership from the book of Nehemiah. This blog focuses on Nehemiah's main task of rebuilding the walls and gates of Jerusalem, the chosen home of God's people and place of worship. It may help you to answer the question of what needs rebuilding in your church and what the Lord may want you to do about it.
Over my ministry career, I have had the opportunity to work with both churches in transition and churches being planted. My next few Coach and Equip Ministries blogs will deal with some of these lessons. In the first blog on this subject, I want to share with you what some of them are. Read on to find out more.