When I preached the message of this podcast a number of years ago, I introduced it by saying it was one of the most important messages I had ever preached! A bit melodramatic, to be sure, but it captures the impact on my own life around the powerful spiritual truth found in the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth in Luke 1:39-56. The miracle of the Incarnation, the birth of God in the world, is also a reality we are to live into – i.e. receiving the new things He is birthing in and through us day by day. Let me invite you to ponder the painting below,  The Visitation, by He Qi , and his capturing of the great story in Luke 1:39-56. First, notice Mary’s right arm protecting her womb. She knows God is birthing a precious gift inside her. She thus makes a three-month visit to Elizabeth’s house after she becomes pregnant, seeking support and. Read more.

This podcast serves as a devotional on one of the key challenges to every leader – exercising patience in an impatient world. Whether the issue is discernment or the timing on when to have a difficult conversation, learning to wait patiently is one of the greatest gifts we can give those around us. I share briefly from Alan Kreider’s The Patient Ferment of the Early Church where he notes that one of the primary reasons the church grew in her first 300 years was because of her commitment to patience. He argues they created a comprehensive “culture of patience,” with the early church fathers writing more about the Christian virtue of patience than about evangelism. People looking on from the outside were attracted to this non-anxious lifestyle of the early Christians. As a result, the church blossomed evangelistically. Quoting the early church father Tertullian (3rd century), he writes: God’s mission is unhurried and unstoppable.. Read more.

What started out as a podcast planned around this title: “How Can a Pastor or Leader Flourish around Christmas?” evolved into a very different podcast about the leadership mistakes I made around Christmas. I allowed the pressure of the wider church culture, my own unresolved shadow issues, and my low-level of differentiation to make decisions that were not God’s best. In this podcast, I share the five major mistakes I made. Sadly, it actually took me nineteen years to implement significant changes! The following are 5 leadership mistakes that I hope and pray you can avoid around Christmas so that your life and leadership might BE the message of Christmas: 1. I failed to put first things first.  I did not steward myself or my family well. 2. I wasted time trying to live someone else’s life and ministry. I grew anxious as other churches thrived and flourished in their large Christmas events. 3. I engaged in. Read more.

 We pray you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! Before we introduce this week’s podcast, we want to remind you that today is Giving Tuesday. At EHD, we are seeking to raise $10K to fund the translation of our resources into Spanish to reach the 477 million Spanish-speakers worldwide. With your help, we can multiply deeply changed disciples all around the world! Give Now   At the end of my 21st year at New Life Fellowship Church as Lead Pastor, our staff did a half-day exercise around the turning point lessons we had learned over those years. (A number of us in the room had been there since the beginning.). Over the next several weeks, I refined those lessons and, with the help of our elder board, edited them down into “10 Hard Lessons.” In this podcast, I expand on numbers six through ten of “10 Hard Lessons” I learned in my first 21 years of. Read more.

10 Hard Lessons from Decades of Failures and Mistakes: Part 1 Listen Now: Podcast At the end of my 21st year at New Life Fellowship Church as Lead Pastor, our staff did a half-day exercise around the turning point lessons we had learned over those years. (A number of us in the room had been there since the beginning.). Over the next several weeks, I refined those lessons and, with the help of our elder board, edited them down into “10 Hard Lessons.” In this podcast, I expand on five of those lessons birthed out of difficult labor, costly mistakes, and painful suffering. My hope was that future generations at New Life would prayerfully re-read before God and not repeat our mistakes. When I unexpectedly found this document buried in my files, I was amazed at the timelessness of these hard lessons. My hope is that you will be reflective before God around your. Read more.

This podcast invites you into a lesson God brought into my life that shifted my view of myself and my leadership. I was struggling to lead New Life into her next phase. I had founded the church 18/19 years earlier and was at a personal crossroads. I struggled with self-doubt and pessimism around my abilities and wondered if I had the inner resources needed to take our church forward. Perhaps, I had given New Life all I had to give and it was time for someone new to be the senior leader. Then God met me powerfully through the story of David in 1 Samuel 17. Unlike the army of Israel that was filled with great fear, he stepped over the counsel of Saul and his older siblings who said, “You are incapable and will fail.” And he attacked Goliath, leading God’s people into a new future. How did he do it? He remembered. Read more.