Tag Archives: leaders

Pornography, Sexuality, and the Church

The Statistics Are Staggering: 66% of Internet-using men between the ages of 18-34 look at online porn at least once a month (1) 55% of pastors admitted to participating with porn online. (2) Over 40% of women on line are involved in problematic cyber behavior. (3) The largest consumer of Internet pornography is the 12 to 17 year old age group. (4) 90% of male teens 15-17 years old will view pornography this month. 34% of them will become addicts. Since meeting Ted Roberts, founder of Pure Desire Ministries www.puredesire.org a few months ago, I have been conducting an informal survey with pastors, leaders, and others to determine if above statistics are true. Sadly I am now convinced they are. I spent time with Ted Roberts in person this past weekend. I was challenged and sobered once again at the enormous challenge we are confronting in our sexually charged and addicted culture – both. Read more.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Pastor/Leader Life Cycle

I just completed an Updated/Expanded version of The Emotionally Healthy Church that is to be released in February, 2010. So this led me to quite a bit of reflection on what is the process for pastors and leaders to engage EHS, especially now that 30+ churches (as of last spring) have finished the Church-wide initiative. 1. Begin the Journey The most important thing we can do is to engage the message in our own lives, and to apply personally the powerful biblical themes explored in this book. Begin reading Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Nelson, 2006) and/or The Emotionally Healthy Church (Zondervan, 2003 and 2010). Remember, we lead out of who we are. 2. Introduce to Leadership (EHS in Small Group) Gather a small group of your key leaders around The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook (Willow Creek Publishing, 2009) and begin providing an experience for your leaders to “go beneath the tip-of-the-iceberg” in. Read more.

Reflections on Singapore Leadership Conference, July 2009

Geri and I have just begun our yearly, summer “sabbatical” rest (our old term was “vacation”). We are in Thailand, beginning to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Yet we wanted to take a few moments and share with you several highlights from our time in Singapore at the Eagles Leadership Conference where we spent the last 6 days. 1375 delegates (pastors and leaders) from 19 countries attended this very well-run, powerful conference. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand were the top four countries represented. Geri and I did a plenary session around our story and the main insights of EHS. This was followed by a full day workshop for around 200 leaders, and then 2 shorter workshops around “The Leader’s Spouse (by Geri) and Insights of Monasticism for the 21st Century (me) on the final day. We were very well-received and felt greatly honored. We also learned quite a bit. The following are a few. Read more.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Conference Online

We are now in the midst of our Pastors/Leaders Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Conference at New Life Fellowship in Queens, NY. Geri, myself, and the rest of our staff had a wonderful time with Pastors/Leaders and their spouses yesterday at our pre-conference. We are looking forward to the next couple of days in journeying together toward healthy God-centered lives and marriages. I have asked Drew Hyun, one of our associate pastors who also serves on our Teaching Team, to connect you with the blogging/twittering that is going on at the conference. If you’d like to follow real-time updates on our conference (as well as updates from the pre-conference yesterday), you can click below at the following link: www.twubs.com/ehsconf For those of you on twitter who would like to join the discussion, you can use the hashtag “#ehsconf” and include it in any tweet that you post. Meanwhile, there is a list of blogs found at. Read more.

Abba Anthony, Henri Nouwen and CCDA

Last week I attended and spoke at the Christian Community Development Association conference (CCDA) in Miami. Over 2000 people were in attendance. The work of John Perkins and CCDA, along with their commitment to racial reconciliation and relocation to live among the poor, helped shape my journey for Christ almost thirty years ago as well as our work here at New Life. Most leaders in attendance are very busy. I also became acutely aware of the growing impact of emotionally healthy spirituality around the country. Both realties concerned me. Then, as I sat in my hotel room one early morning, God came to me through the following: Abba Anthony received letter from emperor Constantine to visit him in Constantinople. He wondered if he should go and asked Abba Paul who said, “If you go, you will be called Anthony, but if you stay here (in desert alone), you will be called Abba Anthony. “ An “abba’ was someone recognized as. Read more.

Driving in the Right Lane and Spirituality

I have finally identified one of the core issues to my walk with Jesus Christ – driving in the right lane. Try it for a week. Okay, a day. Then try driving in the right lane and do nothing else but drive. No radio, phone calls, tapes, etc. It is a Sabbath activity for me and has been for some time. It is exhilarating. But I have not not been able to integrate this into my work week. Why? It is deep, I suspect. Very deep. Ruthlessly eliminating hurry (Dallas Willard’s famous phrase to John Ortberg) captures what, I believe, is one of our critical issues as followers of Christ in our culture. In New York City we are famous for finishing people’s sentences, speeding to red lights, fighting for a seat on a subway or bus, and “attitude.” Traveling around North America, however, has shown me that we don’t have a patent on the problem. Multitasking, continuous partial attention, and trying to. Read more.

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