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,…