First, Jesus distinguished the first and second commandment. He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as...

George Hunter in his book How to Reach Secular People identifies “Ten Characteristics of Secular People.” They are as follows: They are essentially ignorant of basic Christianity. They are “ignostics”; that is, they are simply ignorant of biblical information. They...

About one out of seven guests told us, surprisingly, they did not return because the people were too friendly. Some noted that issue in the context of the stand-and-greet time, while others said it was an issue at all points in the church. “I came away worn out from...

Unfriendly church members. This response was anticipated. But the surprise was the number of respondents who included non-genuine friendliness in their answers. In other words, the guests perceived some of the church members were faking it. Unsafe and unclean...

https://youtu.be/hsIprieLUnM

Most human beings believe in an afterlife. And in most cases, this belief involves a good place and a bad place. If you’re a good person, and you embrace the right beliefs, you go to the good place. If you’re not, and you don’t, you go to the bad place. Seems simple...

I have a sign on the back wall of my office that I look at first thing every morning when I sit down at my desk. In large block letters, it echoes something my good friend Dallas Willard used to say: “Eternity Is Now in Session.” God is not waiting for eternity to...

 “Where’s the Beef?” In 1984 the hamburger chain Wendy’s introduced a commercial that became an instant classic. In the early releases, the commercial portrayed an elderly woman looking at a hamburger from a competitor of Wendy’s. The meat in the burger was...

It might sound boring, but at a fundamental level, God wants the exact same thing from you and me as He has wanted from every other person who names the name of Jesus as Lord: He wants us to truly follow Jesus. To be His disciples. That was, after all, the marching...

Nine out of ten guests do not like the stand-and-greet time in church services! What is that? Why are there such major differences between the preferences and opinions of the members and the preferences and opinions of the guests? The guests addressed this issue in...

To be fair, in our study of first-time church guests, we heard from a number of them who had really pleasant experiences, and decided to return. Let’s look at the top ten responses from the perspective of the happy guest. Some of them are just the opposite of the ten...

Sent: The Fifth Habit I will journal throughout the week all the ways I alerted others to the universal reign of God through Christ. The final habit is to begin identifying yourself as a missionary —a sent one —by journaling the ways you’re alerting others to God’s...

PRAYER, in the preacher’s life, in the preacher’s study, in the preacher’s pulpit, must be a conspicuous and an all-impregnating force and an all-coloring ingredient. It must play no secondary part, be no mere coating. To him it is given to be with his Lord “all night...

https://youtu.be/CnjdkkssFrk

God’s constant presence is ultimately what makes the insignificant become significant. If we look through the pages of Scripture, we find time and time again God invading the ordinary and then making the ordinary into something extraordinary. It’s not that the thing...

But many church members and leaders are wrong. When we asked hundreds of guests about their experiences visiting churches, it was not a pretty picture. We asked specifically why they did not return to a particular church. Here were their top ten responses: The...

The preacher must be preeminently a man of prayer. His heart must graduate in the school of prayer. In the school of prayer only can the heart learn to preach. No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will...

The third habit I want you to foster is that of listening for the Spirit’s voice. I suggest you find at least one chunk of time, preferably at the beginning of each week, to stop and create space to commune with God. For many people, listening to the Holy Spirit is...

https://youtu.be/nBhMro7hwtc

If you’re a Christian as I am, then you probably would acknowledge a belief in the pervasive and all-encompassing work of God. We would agree together that God is not passive but active, constantly moving and working in the world at all times. We say it, but do we...

The preaching that kills may have insight and grasp of principles, may be scholarly and critical in taste, may have every minutia of the derivation and grammar of the letter, may be able to trim the letter into its perfect pattern, and illume it as Plato and Cicero...

The third habit I want you to foster is that of listening for the Spirit’s voice. I suggest you find at least one chunk of time, preferably at the beginning of each week, to stop and create space to commune with God. For many people, listening to the Holy Spirit is...

I am afraid. There, I said it, and now it’s out there. But I need to clarify the statement. My biggest fear in life is not of sickness, financial hardship, public speaking, heights, or even spiders. My biggest fear is being ordinary. I am deathly afraid of being just...

https://youtu.be/K8p1Z2G24G8