Blog Articles and Resources for Pastors and Church Leaders
Blog Articles and Resources for Pastors and Church Leaders
A Biblical Framework for Women in Church Leadership Roles
Regardless of what your opinion may be about women filling positions of leadership in the church, Jesus spoke of several women who played important roles in spreading the gospel message. The following article is an excerpt from the new book Now...
What evidence do we have for God's existence?
One might ask, if what we believe about God determines our ultimate destiny, shouldn’t the evidence be more obvious and available? If knowing God is so important, why does he remain so hidden? Space doesn’t permit us to explore all the answers to...
3 Common Misconceptions About the book of Esther - Interview with Mike Cosper
What do you think we get wrong about the book of Esther? For most of my life, I heard two themes around the book of Esther that I now believe to be totally off-base. The first is that Esther is a story about a virtuous Jewish girl who won the heart...
2 Remarkable Actions of Jesus & Why They Matter
Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom, and his reputation as a miracle worker, raise the critical question of how he understood his identity and mission. While our limited sources do not allow us to build a psychological profile of Jesus, the implicit...
Emotionally Healthy Church - My Four Conversions
As we progress in the Christian life, we find that it is a never-ending process. We go back, breaking some destructive power of the past. Then later, on a deeper level, God has us return to the same issue on a more profound level. I have...
Stuck? 3 Productivity Traps & How To Escape Them
Many of us feel like we are not getting done what really matters to us and what we are truly capable of doing. And even when we are accomplishing things, doing so is a battle that surely must be harder than it really has to be. The goal of my book...
3 Marks of a Faith-Fueled Work Ethic
The gospel flips the way we think about the people with whom we work. Once you realize you work for Jesus and your first responsibility is to follow him, then you realize your job isn’t just about you anymore. Your job becomes an arena in which to...
The Substance & Theology of Love: Lessons from 1 Corinthians
Love is a way of being as a person, a way of thinking, acting, and living. It is, in fact, being Christ-like or (given the first-person singular in 11:1 ) even being like Paul, who has shown us what this looks like in his own life in chapter 9 and...
The Path to Discernment in the Local Church: Thoughts from Scot McKnight
In general , I am thinking of what a local church or a local denomination does in order to discern how best to live out the gospel in its day and in its way. While personal discernment for my own life is important, that is not what I have in mind...
Establish Friendship Before You Correct
Friendship is far more important to God than we often realize. We tend to think he puts top priority on performance, purity, and perfection, and we assume relationship is the eventual reward for those things. In other words, the more like Jesus we...
Crash Course in Biblical Authorship - Who Wrote the Bible?
When we approach the Bible, our first question is usually, What does it say? Now that’s a good question. But we need to ask another question first: What is the Bible? This is a big question, so we’ll break it into three separate questions: Who...
Rebuild and Celebrate - Book of Nehemiah
One of the greatest lessons I personally learned as I wrote a book about the process of rebuilding based on Nehemiah was the need to celebrate. Nehemiah celebrated when the task was finished, but he also celebrated as they were building the wall of...
Raising Passionate Jesus Followers
Pastoring a church isn’t a 9 to 5 thing; it’s a lifestyle job—24/7! There will always be more to do than we can ever get done, and more people we ought to spend time with than we possibly can. Raising Passionate Jesus Followers In the throes of it...
The Secret to Leading Like Jesus
Jesus had a team. His team was the disciples. Jesus knew the secret and never got seduced by numbers and stats. He was explicit about his desire to equip his followers to do the heroic: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the...
Singles vs. Married Couples in the Church - Party of One
The language we use in the church, from innocent questions to the names of the singles ministries, reinforces some damaging and demoralizing lies surrounding singleness and marriage. We need to consciously work against handing out false hope (“God...
Hearing the Voice of Mercy in the Depths of Grief
Once my life had a lofty purpose—to speak to churches and write books about God’s goodness so that people would want a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. But Scott’s death robbed me of the story I had told myself to make sense of my life. I had...
Free Resources
Using How (not) to Save the World with your church or small group?
Here are some tools to help:
The Small Group Tool Kit includes two mobile-friendly invitation cards, reflection cards to enhance your small group experience, and a worship song playlist curated by Hosanna Wong that can beplayed during small group meetings or personal Bible study time.
The Church Tool Kit includes a downloadable poster, bulletininsert, invitation card, and Power Point slide.
Is your church talking about anxiety, depression and mental health issues? You should be.
Shawn Johnson, lead pastor of Red Rocks Church, gives a
searingly honest portrait of anxiety and depression and shows readers how to fight back and live free. He also has put together three free tools pastors can use to help their congregation have a productive conversation around mental health, including a discussion guide, sermon notes and key Scripture verses.