Several years ago, I had a breakfast meeting with an elder at my church. When the check came, I reached across the table to pay. But he refused and said, “I have a policy that I always pay for the pastor.” I laughed. “But I am not a pastor,” I said, using ...
How would you exercise spiritual leadership if you weren’t allowed to be employed by a church, teach publicly, or attend seminary?
Sarah Edwards (1710–1758), wife of famous colonial pastor Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), lived with all these restrictions, ...
In her landmark book, You Just Don’t Understand, linguist and researcher Deborah Tannen, noted that women tend to use communication to connect and emphasize common ground, even from a young age. Men, on the other hand, more often use communication to compete, to assert ...
My brother’s car sped off down the street. The police officer jumped into his vehicle in pursuit. What started off as a suicide intervention had quickly turned into a high speed car chase. As I sat in shock in the first squad car chasing my brother, our speeds increasing ...
Fatigued from a sleepless night of worry, I sat frozen, staring at a list of unanswered emails. I had been coming alongside a woman in my ministry, and her email subject lines had increased in intensity over the week from “Can you help?” to “I’m hurting!” ...
I once saw my past as a liability. I thought I had the wrong upbringing, the wrong ethnicity, and even the wrong sex. But God had a different plan.
Starting at the age of 8, I walked a mile with my little sister and brother to our little country church, tip-toeing past ...
Two years ago, Heather Larson stepped into the executive pastor role at Willow Creek—what Bill Hybels describes as the number two position in the church. But the truth is she’d been leading and building the church alongside Hybels long before she ever got the matching ...
