On Tuesday, February 26, 2008 Starbucks closed all of its American stores at 5:30 PM so that employees nationwide could receive a three hour retraining of sorts on the intricacies of making the perfect cup of espresso. Customers were turned away at the door as employees were trained and had their skills refined. CEO Howard Shultz …
As I was researching some leadership development options for use among our staff, I came across a Forbes article from 2012 that argues leadership training should be scrapped in favor of leadership development. The author lists 20 of the primary differences between leadership training and leadership development, and I couldn’t help but see the ways …
In Hebrews 10:24, we are urged to “consider one another.” Preaching this passage almost 20 years ago, John Piper had this to say about considering one another: Consider one another. But this is almost impossible to bring over into English with the rest of the sentence, because it would be so awkward. It would have …
Yesterday, we celebrated children’s day in our church. It’s an annual tradition, we celebrate the kids who are moving into the student ministry and we invite our children to participate in leading worship. They greeted us, led us in singing, prayed publicly, read scripture, collected the offering and even participated in the sermon. It was …
My buddy Travis Agnew has a great little blog post on allowing mothers to mother. I began making a list of questions that mothers receive (I’m sure I missed some here, ladies, feel free to fill in the rest): Will you use prenatal vitamins? How much do you exercise? Do you drink anything with caffeine? …
Would Jesus visit with our churches and discover that our definition of healthy fits his definition of healthy? We love, but do we love as God loves? Jonathan Leeman says, “We assume not that God is love but that love is God.” The church of Christ is a community where her members love each other …
I heard recently of a pastor who was censured by his deacons because he refused to allow a woman to sing in the church choir who was living in open and unrepentant sin. Odd to consider that a group of leaders who are supposed to use the Bible as their guide opposed the biblical mandate …
Friday night, I took my family to see the Atlanta Braves beat the pants off of the Cubs. On that night, Dan Uggla extended his hitting streak to 32 games breaking an Atalanta franchise record and hit two home runs. Three other braves hit the long ball that night as well. It was a great …
How long should a sermon be? I write this because after our Easter service and my 15 minute sermon, many folks in our congregation commented that they thought I was just getting started when I gave the invitation. One lady even stopped me and said, “Great sermon, but just one thing…it was too short.” Honestly, …
Getting to know our neighbors is not always an easy endeavor in today’s society. My good friend Ben Stevens has written an article, “To Love Your Neighbor, You Must Know Your Neighbor,” that can help us in this important aspect of the Christian life. As pastors, we need to encourage our people to get to …