It may be counter-intuitive, but sometimes even when you know precisely what needs to happen, it takes outside perspective to increase the leverage for change. As Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home” Matthew 13:57....
A friend of mine, Dennis Easter, is recovering from cancer with an excellent prognosis. He shared with me one of the learnings he has gained through this process: “To leverage my healing journey, God showed me how my treatment center could be a house of healing....
Once I received a handwritten note of thanks from someone who was impacted by my ministry. My executive assistant (secretary back then) handed it to me and said, “Put this in your happy file.” That gave me the idea to start one. Ever since,...
Sometimes raising support makes you feel like a homeless person on a street corner asking passersby for money. I thought today I’d share the way I overcame that feeling when I raised support. (Full disclosure: I’m no longer on support; I’ve...
This Friday morning I just wanted to share with you an anonymous comment from a coaching client on the value coaching can bring: I left the office on Friday feeling great. Nothing much had changed, it was still cold and grey outside. I realized that what had changed...
Here’s something I saw in Honduras: kids playing soccer with an empty liter of soda. They don’t have much at all, but they found an empty bottle, turned it into a soccer ball, and they were having a wonderful time. Seeing this, it struck me how much contentment is...
Sometimes the unjust win. It can make you both mad and sad, but the wicked do seem to prosper and the system is set in their favor. That can be very distressing. Our friend Asaph faced that in his prayer recorded in Psalm 73. This is just a brief excerpt: I encourage...
When I’ve worked with teams, I’ve tried to emphasize tackling a problem by looking at it from multiple perspectives. The usual perspective is, of course, their own: what they’re going to do to fix the problem from the top down. Yet it’s very helpful to look at the...
There’s a book by Michael Gerber called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. One of the points he makes, which is equally applicable to church planting, is that many entrepreneurs get caught up working in the...
