We need to stay grounded in Jesus, not only for his name sake, but for the world, for those we lead, for our family, and for ourselves. What we do matters; who we are matters even more. This podcast returns to Matthew 4:1-11, looking at Jesus as our model of embracing his limits in order to stay rooted in the Father’s love and seemingly “ineffective” timetable. Satan leads Jesus up to pinnacles and high points, tempting him to pride. The Holy Spirit leads Jesus down to suffering and the cross, grounding him in humility. Each of us faces the same choice many times in our lives. God longs to free us from a frenzied, overcommitted ministry where we attempt to live a life he never intended. Instead, he invites us to a leadership marked by contentment where we joyfully give thanks for all our limits as expressions of his love and goodness. Join me. Read more.

Jesus’ resistance to Satan in the desert offers us a profound model of how we too can remain grounded in the Father’s love when we are confronted with powerful seductions. Demonic temptations come to each of us in the different seasons and phases of our leadership journey. That is why the Scriptural accounts of Jesus’ temptations are so inexhaustible and multilayered every time we come to them. This podcast is a meditation of Matthew 4:1-11 around two questions: In light of Jesus’ responses to Satan, what do we learn about staying grounded in leadership? What are ways in which Satan tries to split you off/separate you away from the Father in your pastoring/leading? I also talk about our continual need to nourish ourselves from God through Scripture apart from the work we do for him. It is critical we carefully distinguish our work for God from our worship of him. Why? The moment we. Read more.

Saying no to leadership opportunities, and with it increased impact and influence, is not a topic talked about very often today. For that we need to look at the work of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church. In this podcast, I look at two towering figures in particular: Bernard of Clairvaux and Gregory of Nazianzus. Bernard of Clairvaux was an active leader who established hundreds of monasteries in Europe by the time of his death in 1153 AD. He had little patience for an activism that was not nourished by a deep interior life with Jesus. In fact, he called it the sin of sloth because it was a busyness that refused to bear the effort demanded by a life of solitude and prayer. When one of his spiritual sons, Eugene III, became Pope, he wrote him a series of letters, warning him against being engaged in activity before the time. Read more.

As people who lead in the name of Jesus, we are not to enter every open door or seize every new opportunity. Why? Doing so prematurely, i.e. outside of God’s timetable, damages both ourselves and his long-term kingdom mission in the world. We see this in biblical examples such as Jesus’ limits on the authority of the Twelve as he discipled them as well and the seven sons of Sceva’s premature attempt to drive out evil spirits for Jesus without a life with Jesus. The ancient church talked about this saying of no to leadership opportunities a lot more than we do today. In this podcast I tell the story of Theodore of Pherme (a 4th century desert teacher) who said no to pastoral leadership in his day: Time after time, the old men brought him back to Scetis saying, “Do not abandon your role as a deacon.” Abba Theodore said to them,“Let me. Read more.

Before I put pen to paper in writing The Emotionally Healthy Leader, I spent six to eight months creating charts contrasting the standard practice of how we typically do leadership vs. an emotionally healthy way. These eight charts became the skeleton upon which the EH Leader book was fleshed out. Now we have placed them, in their original form, in an e-book entitled: Why Leadership Matters for a Discipleship that Deeply Changes Lives. The following is one sample chart: In this podcast, I offer highlights from the 8 charts (e.g. lead out of your marriage, planning and decision making, culture and team building, power and wise boundaries). Remember: Who you are is more important than what you do. We cannot give what we do not possess. We can only give what we do possess. Live Stream Training | November 29th 1-4:30pm EST Register Now!

In this podcast, I explore the story of God directing Elijah to go to a desert for silence and solitude. Under the rule of Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, idolatry in Israel reaches an all-time high. In their attempt to stamp out worship of Yahweh completely, they exile and kill a large number of the Lord’s prophets. And Elijah finds himself alone and under enormous pressure. Elijah is told by God to wait for the presence of the Lord to pass by. But God does not appear in ways he had showed up in the past. Instead he comes in a new way. God is not in the wind (as with Job), an earthquake (as when he gave the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai), or fire (as in the burning bush with Moses). God reveals himself to Elijah in “a gentle whisper,” which is better translated from the original Hebrew as “a sound of. Read more.