I want to tell you about a conversation I wish I could get back. It was the end of a long Sunday. I’d preached in the morning, then led a small group for another hour and a half. By the time I got to my office I was wiped out. Honestly, I was already driving…
We’re in the afterglow of America’s 250th Fourth of July. Fireworks, parades, hamburgers and hot dogs. And I’ll admit it, I kind of love all that. I don’t mind the phrase “healthy patriotism” one bit. If patriotism means loving the land and the people, the freedoms, the best parts of our history, then count me…
I recently heard that Disney let go of 1,000 artists and designers. Presumably, AI can now generate a Marvel superhero’s costume faster and cheaper than a human being can. I don’t know about you, but something about that makes me sad. And a little uneasy. We are living through a genuine disruption of work. AI…
Let’s be honest… In a world rapidly changing, the church is standing at the precipice of a pivotal transformation. This isn’t just another minor shift; it’s a seismic movement signaling that the very heart of worship and community is being redefined. Enter the Nomads Enter the ‘nomads,’ as Terry Walling calls them—a growing population…
Easter is almost here! This year, as I’ve been thinking about Easter, I’ve also been thinking about discontinuous change. I’ve written and spoken about discontinuous change in the past, but what the heck does it have to do with Easter?! What is Discontinuous Change? First, a quick definition. Discontinuous change—as opposed to continuous change,…
One of the hardest things about being a pastor is the feeling that what you’re doing isn’t making a difference. You put the work in week in and week out–and for what? People don’t seem to be growing in their faith. Younger generations are disappearing from your church. And you can’t, for the life of…
Shalom is one of my favorite words. What is Shalom? The simple meaning of shalom is “peace.” But shalom is so much more than a mere absence of violence or hostility. It’s about much more than a couple of friends or a couple of nations getting along with each other. Shalom has to with…
One of my favorite things to do with a team of leaders is “dwelling in Scripture.” This is a simple lectio divina exercise that works great with groups. How “Dwelling in Scripture” works What I love about the practice of dwelling in scripture is that it requires absolutely zero preparation. So often, we who…
When I think about toxic influences, I think about “toxic assets.” I learned this term during the recession of 2008. The assets refer to mortgage loans. As the housing market collapsed the value of the properties fell below the value of the loans. Suddenly, these loans became liabilities because the houses that secured the loans…
Ever feel like people expect you to be perfect? Or maybe you expect others to be perfect? Or maybe you find yourself feeling shocked or taken aback or disappointed when your family or your friends or your congregation fall short of your expectations. I’ve certainly been there. On both sides. Those expectations are what we…
Well, if you’re a pastor I hope you got your Easter sermon ready for Sunday. And it better be a good one! I mean, your sermons can be mediocre throughout the year, but you better nail it this Sunday! That’s what you should do! Letting Go of the “Shoulds” It is really easy to…
In this guest article, Dr. David J. Quel shares about his experience raising three Autistic boys. Not only has David been in pastoral ministry for over twenty-five years, he also has a Doctorate in Marriage and Family Counseling and a Master’s degree in Autism Studies. Over the last twenty-one years, I have had the…
Someone said to me recently after church, “Protestants don’t really have a good theology of suffering.” And I think this person is right. In Protestant circles, we tend to focus more on things like: “Victory in Jesus!” “Just believe and it will be yours!” “All things work together for the good of those who love…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of exile as a way of understanding the challenge of church leadership today. It’s a helpful way of thinking about the church’s place in the world right now, especially in Western culture. What is exile? The truth is, most of us in the West are…
On Tuesday, October 4, I landed in Porto, Portugal, to begin walking the Camino de Santiago. For the next eight days, I would walk anywhere from twelve to twenty miles—a total of about a hundred miles—taking one step after another on my way to Santiago de Compostela. The Camino de Santiago is an ancient pilgrimage…
Have you ever felt frustrated when circumstances changed? Maybe it was vacation plans. Maybe work plans. Maybe family circumstance changed. Whatever it was, you planned for things to be this way, but now they’re that way. When things don’t go as planned, that might put us in a state of what we might call disequilibrium. …
I had a memory this week. Surprisingly, it got me thinking about the dangers of leadership. My Cowboy Lunchbox and Batman Keychain I was five years old when my family moved to Germany. Before the flight, my mom had packed up a “suitcase” for me, which I was very excited about. That suitcase was…
Sometimes you gotta step out of your comfort zone. I don’t know about you, but I much prefer to stay in my comfort zone. It’s way easier inside my comfort zone. I know how things work inside my comfort zone. I know what to expect inside my comfort zone. I mean, I just feel comfortable…
I’ve been fired twice in my life. The second time was from the last church I served. It was incredibly painful and I’ve shared that story in a few different podcasts, which you can listen to HERE, HERE, and HERE. The first time I got fired I was in my early twenties. One of…
The summer of 1993 was a great summer! North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Ocean. Sunshine. Golf. Best Summer Ever! There were about 60 of us college students (and about 20 staff) on Summer Project with Campus Crusade for Christ. And it was one of the best summers of my life! We worked jobs on…
What do you do when the world you’re living in is turned upside down? As a pastor, I’ve thought a lot about this over the years. The world we live in is not the world we were prepared for. The kind of ministry we tend to do is designed for a world that no longer…
You can just call me Mr. Arrogant. Or Captain Cocky. Ooh, or how about Pastor Proud! Yep, there’s a lot of arrogance in me. “But, wait, Markus. Didn’t you tell us in your last blog post that you struggled with feeling like you weren’t enough?” I did. And here’s the crazy part. Arrogance is really…
Am I enough? Nope. At least that’s how I often feel. And I have lived with this feeling of being “not enough” for most of my life. As a kid, I always felt like I was on the outside looking in. I felt like I wasn’t cool enough, or athletic enough, or smart enough, or…
Learning about leadership can happen in the most unexpected places! My 16-year-old son, Micah, just got his driving permit a couple of weeks ago. And I gotta say, it’s both fun and scary to teach my boy how to drive–we’ve only almost run one car off the road so far! (This is a picture of…
Logos 9 Bible study software offers some really great features and improvements over Logos 8. But the short of it is this: Logos 9 helps you craft really great sermons! I’m going to keep this short, so I’m just going to share with you two of my favorite features. (Click HERE if you want to…
Most of us were trained to be teachers and chaplains Tod Bolsinger explains that most pastors haven’t been prepared to be organizational change leaders–and how the Church Leadership Institute can help pastors lead effectively in this changing world. Listen to the full episode here: https://www.markuswatson.com/100
The Challenge of Ministry I’m so thrilled to announce that Spiritual Life and Leadership is now the official podcast for Fuller Theological Seminary’s new Church Leadership Institute (CLI). Why does this matter? Because ministry leadership is more challenging than ever! And I get it—because I feel the same challenges in my own leadership. What we…
“Us” vs. “Them.” It’s how most people see the world. Another word for this is tribalism. And, apparently, tribalism comes quite naturally to us. Here’s what a study titled Tribalism Is Human Nature says: Humans evolved in the context of intense intergroup competition, and groups comprised of loyal members more often succeeded than those that…
Tempered Resilience, by Tod Bolsinger, helps leaders step into the challenge of adaptive change with health, strength, and confidence. In Canoeing the Mountains, Bolsinger showed pastors, leaders, and churches what to do in order to lead adaptively in uncharted times. In Tempered Resilience, he shows us how to be and become the kind of person…
What is Pre-Christendom? Pre-Christendom is the era of Christianity lasting from the time of Jesus until 312 C.E. when the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian. It is called Pre-Christendom because it preceded the Christendom era, the years when Christianity was at the center of Western culture. In the years following the life of Jesus,…
Let me ask you a question. What’s more important, my personal rights or the common good? We could put it in more specific terms. What’s more important: My right to bear arms or the safety of school children who are often the targets of mass shootings? My right to not wear a mask or the…
A Year of Suffering I’m a white male. What that means is that I’m a person for whom neither the color of my skin nor my gender have ever been an obstacle. I’ve had other obstacles, but not those. And so there’s a part of me that feels unqualified to speak into the current moment. …
[All Logos 9 packages are currently on sale for 15% off. Click HERE to get the discount. And read my review of Logos 9 HERE.] It happened! I had been looking at the Logos Bible study software website when it happened. I stumbled across the Logos endorsements page and I saw something that made…
The Age of COVID-19 The world is broken and in desperate need of shalom. If you’ve never noticed it before, I bet you’ve noticed it in the age of COVID-19. COVID-19 is running rampant in our world. At the time that I’m writing this, there are over a million confirmed cases and over 53,000 deaths.…
Much has been said and written (including by me!) about the ways churches need to change in order to be the church we are called to be in the world as it is today. Over the past several decades, we’ve used all kinds of adjectives to describe what the church should be like: Missional Attractional…
How does change happen? How do organizations and institutions change? How do churches change? The world has changed dramatically—and churches have noticed! There’s no getting around it. The way we’ve done ministry in the past—strategic planning leading to lots of felt-needs-based programming—doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. Something has to change. Exactly what needs to…
I love the church I’ve heard it said that the church is the hope of the world—and I agree! The church is the Body of Christ and the Light of the World. I firmly believe that it is through the church – God’s people – that He will bring healing and redemption to the brokenness of…
I’m going to start this post off with a bad joke… Ready? My wife yelled at me today saying, “You weren’t even listening just now, were you?” I thought to myself, “Man, what a weird way to start a conversation…” For some people, listening is hard, isn’t it? We get caught up in our own thoughts…
Like many of you, I turned on the news this past week and saw the reports… Another school shooting. This time in Parkdale, Florida. I couldn’t bear to watch for more than a minute… Another tragedy. More death. More shattered lives. It’s times like these that our emotions can run rampant… grief, fear, anger… These…
Most of the time it’s good to have a plan. If you’re starting a church, or beginning an exercise program, or moving into a new career you should probably have a plan. You should know how much it’s going to cost, how long it will take, who will help you accomplish it, and what the…
Vocational Connection Groups—which I began to discuss in this post and in this post—can be the key that unlocks a church’s ability to discern how God is calling them to engage their community. I call them Vocational Connection Groups because they involve three activities: Living out our vocations. In other words, as God’s people, we…
It’s so important for God’s people to be paying attention to what God is doing out in the world. In the next few posts, I’ll explain how we can discover how God is at work ahead of us by means of something I call Vocational Connection Groups. But before we dig into exactly how Vocational…
If it is true that God is already at work in the world in places where God’s people have not yet gone (you can read about that HERE, HERE, and HERE), then it’s incumbent upon us to find out where God is at work, and get involved. That’s God’s invitation to us: “I’m doing…
As we enter the New Year we recognize a few things: 2017 Was A Tough Year No doubt, there was a lot of good that happened in 2017. But there was also a lot of tragedy. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Jose destroyed hundreds of homes and shattered countless lives while wildfires ravaged both Northern and…
Let me start by saying that the video below is a moving and powerful expression of God’s love for us lived out through the vocations of his children. I urge you to watch the video below and share it with your friends and family. You can find out more about the video HERE. That being…
When I was a pastor, one of the greatest challenges was to try to figure out how to bring Jesus into our communities. We would talk about that a lot—in our staff meetings, in our elder meetings, in our deacons meetings. I would talk about it from the pulpit. I would write e-mails about it. …
We’ve seen in this post and this post that God has been at work in the world ahead of his people throughout the scriptures. He was ahead of Joseph (Genesis 37-50), ahead of Daniel (Daniel 4:10-17), ahead of Peter (Acts 10:19-48), and ahead of all the apostles (Acts 11:19-30). If we see examples of God at work ahead…
The “previousness” of God, which I wrote about HERE, refers to the idea that God is already at work in the world before his people even get there. It refers to the fact that God doesn’t need to wait for us—God can begin his work well before we have even realized what God is up…
I’m a big believer in the sovereignty of God. What does “sovereignty” mean? It essentially means that God can and will do as God chooses. I know that raises a lot of questions. Questions about the existence of evil and why God doesn’t always prevent catastrophes. And what about free will? If God is sovereign,…
How do people grow in their faith? Well, the question I really want to ask is, what kinds of things do churches do to help people grow in their faith? Here are a few things we did in my church: Held worship services Sang worship songs Had small groups Asked people to usher and serve…
The unique way in which we live out our calling is what we call our vocation. I used to think of vocation as nothing more than a job. When I was in high school, I had friends who would go to a place called “Vo-Tech” in the afternoons, which stood for “Vocational Technology.” There they…
One of the greatest challenges for the church today is the re-integration of the sacred and the secular. Too many people live with the false belief that their Monday through Saturday lives are less important to God than their life on Sunday—especially Sunday morning. Too many people think that only pastors and missionaries and worship…