Marshall Shelley

For those who met Christ elsewhere, Americanized Christianity can look a bit strange.

Here’s help to understand God’s voice, to live it out, and to help others do the same.

These 11 resources will help your team work together as one body made up of many parts.

How do we minister amid terrorist attacks, racial violence, and the most polarized election in memory?

10 tools to identify and improve your most important practices as a leader.

Tools to help clarify your many relationships.

9 tools to help you overcome the temptations of leadership.

10 tools to clarify who you are and what you do as a pastor.

Over the centuries, shepherding a flock has gotten a bit more complicated.

What you never expected to do when you first sensed God’s calling.

Pressing on to the next chapter.

The ever-shifting condition of church leadership

In ministry we have three primary means of bringing the gospel into the lives of others.

We have the privilege of walking with people whose lives have been shattered.

The preaching icon’s reflections on desolate spirituality, “aridity,” and the hope of home.

A conversation on persuasion with Oswald C. J. Hoffmann and Bill Hybels

What you might have missed in 2014.

Finding Jesus in our unique corner of the world.

A case study in leadership discernment

One church, one journal, innumerable parts.

How one church responded to an unexpected encounter with mental illness.

Encouraging a deeper commitment

An article we never should have published.

Creativity comes from focusing on your goal.

Success comes from multiple attempts

… and bittersweet.

Are expectations forcing you into a role that isn’t true to your calling?

What planting trees and mentoring have in common.

What Abraham Lincoln and Zechariah have in common.

Some people have an easier time talking about sex than about God.

How email and blogs complicate conflict, and what to do about it.

How we handle money says a lot about how we relate to others, and to God.

How our daughter’s brief life showed us eternity.

Keeping the main thing the main thing.

What Special Forces chaplains have learned about the ministry of presence.

Spiritual warfare is part of our world and therefore part of our ministry.

Moving from a stance of admonition to mission

The quiet strength of an activist mystic

Not all desolation is a “dark night of the soul”

Why would God allow the miracle of birth to be followed so quickly by the mystery of death?

The media we use affects how people perceive the message.

How do you know if you’re reaching a city?

From the editor

How churches from different countries, different cultures are demonstrating and proclaiming the gospel.

Reflections from Atlanta and Gabe Lyons.

Reflections from Daniel Pink.

Reflections from Andy Stanley

Reflections from Atlanta and Pete Wilson.

Reflections from Atlanta and Gayle Haggard.

Where does human justice end and divine justice begin?

While one left behind impressive buildings, the other demonstrated a fitness that is mysteriously transferable.

Visiting Israel changed my view of two people I thought I knew.

What focus and intensity and time and God can produce.

Jessica Jackley no longer feels badly for the poor. She’s doing something better.

Making things “right” inevitably strikes many people wrong. What’s with that?

Mark Batterson’s Primal call to purity of motivation

Mulling the “degree of difficulty” and the Great Judge

A clear word for confusing times.

Eliminate debt, live on less than you earn, and save.

The Shack and Its Aftershocks

A lesson from Robert E. Lee

How do you identify the voice of God in your life?

Making a lifestyle of staying only where it’s safe is actually dangerous.

Church leaders who focus first on building a healthy church stand a better chance of weathering warranted–and unwarranted–battles.

Learn to honor those who minister, not those who demand it

Your job as a leader isn’t over until over until you’ve prepared the next generation.

Spiritual strength, as Billy Graham experienced it, means remaining connected to your power Source.

Healthy dissent is ok.

How “lead worshiper” Joseph Garlington helps people recognize holy moments and encounter God.

50th anniversary insights from our founder, Billy Graham.

How to repair and rebuild your team.

Spiritual strength, as the renowned evangelist experienced it, means remaining connected to the Source.

Wherever he preaches, the great Crusader finds ways to make himself and the gospel right at home.

Churches often have “diversity” as a core value. But there’s more than one kind.

How to keep the contentious from poisoning your church.

How does God summon leaders for his cause?

Churches freely provide social services, but neither church nor community realizes to what extent. A new study calculates its value.

Lessons for and from the Goateed

Why “family” suddenly is a bad word.

What do today’s pastors obsess on?

Praying After 9/11

My job is to pray for you, whether you’re a Christian or not.

From shepherd to manager and missionary

The number of deadly sins is not fixed.

Vital signs for today

The role of the pastor has grown over the centuries.

An interview with Tim Keller

You rarely hit creativity by aiming at it directly. You have to point at a larger, more substantial target.

While agreement is wonderful, sometimes conflict is better than consensus.

In today’s battle for values, are pastors supposed to fight? An interview with James Davison Hunter

Bringing color and fragrance to historic church is what you’d expect from a pastor named Rose.

While some may thrive on heated confrontation, most of us long for a calmer, more compassionate means of resolving differences.

Developing spiritual fruit requires being around people–ordinary, ornery people.

An interview with Max Lucado

An interview with Joel Gregory

An interview with Garrison Keillor.

A Leadership Forum

An interview with Thomas Long

An interview with Kennon Callahan

An interview with Richard Nelson Bolles

An Interview with William Willimon

An interview with Lloyd John Ogilvie

An interview with Speed Leas

An interview with Roberta Hestenes

Children of the ministry are not volunteers; they are conscripts. But even they can grow up enjoying their experience.

A Leadership Forum

An interview with Bill Leslie

The strange link between lofty longings and earthly urges.

Forum

If preachers are made, not born, what goes into the process? An interview with Fred Craddock

An interview with Robert Hudnut

Forum

An interview with Truman Dollar

Forum

An interview with Ben Haden

At times you feel obligated to enter a problem situation—without an invitation. How do you proceed prudently?

Forum

An interview with James Dobson

Leadership Forum

Leadership talks to those on the receiving end of three different church visitation programs.

How to determine your church’s specific calling.

The unique struggles and joys of pastoring a congregation of less than a hundred.

An interview with Lynn Buzzard

What pastors do to keep their preaching fresh, balanced, and useful.

Pens outmuscle swords, and books can help people in ways sermons cannot. Here are six secrets of developing a library that ministers.

After six decades of ministry, an eminent churchman assesses the health of the body of Christ.