Do ordinary, busy Christians fast anymore?
That was the question that popped into the mind of our board-of-elders chairman, Austin Chapman. Pastor Anderson had mentioned fasting in a sermon, and now the lay leader was getting practical: What about it? ...
Why do some small groups grow and multiply and others don't? Is there some activity or set of activities a small-group leader can do to increase the probability of the group growing and multiplying? If so, are these activities beyond the reach of ...
You hang up the phone and your immediate thought is, "What have I gotten myself into?" You fluctuate between feeling flattered and panicked. You've just been asked to provide the opening message at the upcoming fall retreat. You said yes. Now what?
With ...
An accountability group exists to help people of God stay pure and faithful in their walk with him and help them overcome sins. It provides a context to live out James 5:16, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that ...
Do you ever get a case of "ministry blah"? Never heard of this nasty sickness? I define the "blah" as "a consistent discouragement with your place of service—often accompanied by repetitive complaining." It can be ...
Small group leaders are the most strategic people in the life changing process. Really the goal in small group ministry should be to have small group leaders as "pastors" of the church.
This kind of church is not a natural thing. Church history runs against ...
Most pastors and leaders have a well-defined vision for the ministries they lead. They have core values they would like their ministries to embody and a mission to accomplish. They develop brochures and PowerPoint presentations laying out their vision ...
From the book Mastering Contemporary Preaching
When I first began teaching publicly, as a youth minister in the early seventies, I taught in a conversational, dialogue style. After all, there were just twenty-five kids. When my material wasn't all ...
Our weekly small-group Bible study has been over for nearly an hour. The last of the lingerers has just pulled out of the driveway to head home. I'm picking up the popcorn bowls and coffee cups. My wife is already logging onto the computer, preparing ...
After more than two decades of promotion in books, magazines, seminars, and classes, the fact about small groups is that few churches can testify to success. Among the reasons are:
- We have few role models, at least in our own culture.
- The literature on the subject has promoted the idea without offering practical methods.
The first small-group discussion I led took approximately 15 minutes. I raced through the questions as if I were a greyhound near the finish line. No one had explained to me how to get a discussion going. Instead I was handed a list of questions and ...
The conference speaker was clear. "There are five essential questions of congregational life," said the Rev. Lloyd John Ogilvie, "five questions that must be asked and answered sequentially. If you skip any of them, the best that your ...
My first experience in small-group ministry is now over—sooner than I expected. But I still believe in the concept. Even though I made so many mistakes, I intend to go out and try again. In fact, I'm already involved in a second small group, and ...
When my family and I started a new church in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the first things we did was perform a community act of kindness. Seven teams, a total of 21 families, met on a Saturday afternoon at a large subdivision close to where we plan to ...
It has become fashionable these days for churches to preach "disciple making." Everyone is for it. Everyone claims it as a priority. The words, however, often exceed the reality.
A tragic personal experience made the need for disciple-making a passion ...
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ can never be reduced to merely producing Christian character in ourselves or loving one another, as important as those things are. Being a disciple of Jesus means making other disciples, because that is what our Lord ...
After 9/11, President Bush challenged Americans to participate in a national candle lighting ceremony and to ask God for help to get through the tragedy. The response was incredible. Days later I walked through my neighborhood and suggested to neighbors ...
So many of us have been there—you wake up in the middle of the night feeling pulled toward starting a small group ministry at your church. But by morning you still have no clue how to go about it.
I'll tell you this: If you're a pastor wondering ...
The small group coordinator in our church scrambles each fall to figure out what in the world the many groups in our congregation should study. The small group leaders look to him for guidance because, although there are an endless amount of studies ...
The high cost of our discipleship begins with the cost of discipline-ship—being willing to devote a portion of each day in solitude, silence, and complete surrender. In the midst of the stresses and strains of our lives, the pauses and punctuation ...
