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Far more books get written about how to get more people in your church than how to get the people already in your church to have more humility and sincere love.
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It strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.
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We do not need answers or formulas to minister in crisis.
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The church is in the hope business.
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Preaching a series allows you to go into greater depth in the text, and spending several weeks on one theme allows the teaching to be absorbed more thoroughly.
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We all want to feel spiritually vigorous, and we hurt when we don't. This pain is intensified for people who lead church ministries.
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Sloth is the failure to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done - like the kamikaze pilot who flew seventeen missions.
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Tithing is a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.
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I wrote 'Soul Keeping' because we are taught more about how to care for our cars than how to steward our souls. But you cannot have an impactful life with an impoverished soul.
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Tithing is like training wheels when it comes to giving. It's intended to help you get started, but not recommended for the Tour de France.
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I hate how spiritual formation gets positioned as an optional pursuit for a small special interest group within the church.
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Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world.
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When someone is in crisis, don't start by teaching, leveraging, or explaining. Just be with.
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I hate how hard spiritual transformation is and how long it takes. I hate thinking about how many people have gone to church for decades and remain joyless or judgmental or bitter or superior.
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Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.
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Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.
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Churches need to figure out how they will address the spiritual lives of their staffs and leadership teams.
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Sometimes in churches somebody will discover a particular vein of spirituality and seek to recruit others into it, or assume a superior position because they have found certain techniques - but no one actually wants to become like them.