When I was twenty-three, I left the United States for a scary, exciting job as an international campus minister. I was all nerves with my year of seminary, husband of a year, and life packed into five large suitcases. It was an adventure into the unknown, following God’s ...
Yesterday, I think something snapped in me. I had heard a particular comment exactly the number of times my heart could take it, and I decided I’m done hearing it. For all our sakes.
I was listening to an intelligent, educated young woman—a leader in her congregation ...
Andy Stanley said, “Leadership is stewardship, and you are accountable,” while speaking to a group of leaders at Catalyst Atlanta in 2006. This quote absolutely resonated with me, because we can forget that as leaders we are responsible for our own leadership. Not ...
I remember the scene like it was yesterday. The night before our annual fundraising banquet and auction, the phone rang. The emcee we had worked with for months had come down with the flu. He would not be able to attend the event the next night, let alone rally the crowd to ...
Preaching is a radical event. In a world moving at a breakneck pace—where most things involve a screen of some sort, and attention spans max out at 280 characters—preachers stand before a group of people who willingly choose to sit and listen for an extended period ...
As a college student I found myself in crisis. On the one hand, I felt an intense call to ministry—concern for the needs of the world and an indescribable pull to do something about it. At the same time I found myself in a context in which (out of an admirable desire to ...
Leaders don’t always get to stay where they want; sometimes they need to go where they’re called. This means that we may find ourselves leaving churches we love in order to see the plans of God unfold.
We left our local church two years ago—a church we served, ...
