Image: Exponential

Loneliness is one of the greatest challenges church planters face.

Seven Key Issues Church Planters Face, a report prepared by Exponential, begins with these words: “Church planting is hard. Church planting is discouraging. Church planting is lonely. It is not for the faint of heart.”

For a woman church planter, those things are multiplied by ten. I should ...

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Your neighbor who has long avoided you is now eager to know what it means to follow Christ. She can no longer tolerate her life of pain. She’s admired your life from a distance and she wants to ask Jesus to come into her heart. You lead her through the sinner’s prayer—and together you both rejoice as she will embark on a whole new journey. What happens ...

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Busyness has become a celebrated lifestyle today. If people aren’t busy, we think less of them. In Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte writes, about time researcher Ann Burnett, who studies Christmas letters and notes the rise of people sharing about their busy lives over the past fifty years. Her research blew my mind. Schulte writes, “Somewhere toward the end of the ...

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Former NBC anchor Brian Williams has had a rough 2015, and last month it got worse.

His viewing audience was informed earlier this year that Williams lied about certain experiences he claimed happened to him during his time reporting in war-torn Afghanistan, and after several months of suspension it looks as if he will not return to the anchor chair.

Pundits say Williams ...

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My husband and I were visiting a church while out of town. Upon arrival we noticed very quickly we were not greeted with friendly faces. After making it inside, an elder introduced us and helped us find children's church then walked us into the sanctuary. During the meet and greet, my husband and I were greeted by the person in front of us, we turned to the person behind ...

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This month, the Missio Alliance hosted its second national conference at the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA. With the theme Being Truly Human: Re-imaging the Resurrectional Life, approximately 600 Christian leaders, pastors, advocates, scholars, and theologians gathered to contemplate the importance of living the resurrection in our daily lives ...

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It’s true…I have been called naive.

Several years ago when my purse was stolen in broad daylight, we found out the police officer wrote in her report that my husband and I seemed very naive. And you know what? She was right. My husband and I were naive to the invasiveness of that experience. We were unsuspecting people!

What I never expected to discover ...

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“What you are doing is not good.”

Jethro said it to Moses in Exodus 18. God said it to me at a time when I was experiencing major leadership overload. “You’re going to wear yourself out—and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself” (Exodus 18:18).

Moses had lived for decades on the back side ...

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When the assistant pastor called the church’s key leaders to his house for an urgent meeting, my husband and I both suspected something serious had happened. We could not have guessed just how serious. Once all 20 of us had packed into the living room, our senior pastor came in and simply said, “I have something to tell you.”

His subsequent admission ...

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For the past century, and arguably longer, generations have self-identified with their own answer to this question. Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? Where were you when news broke that Dr. Martin Luther King was shot, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, when the World Trade Center collapsed? Sadly, recent events have set up our younger generations with ...