Writing

This blog helps pastors and church leaders foster spiritual discernment and maintain a healthy work-life balance, offering reflections and practical advice to lead with clarity and purpose rooted in a strong connection with God.

Unforeseen Circumstances

We are on the other side of the January 22 meeting. One unforeseen detail was that I did not attend. On Saturday afternoon, I came down with a stomach virus. I was unable to preach in morning worship and attend the meeting on Sunday evening. As I ...

Another Decision

It has been a while since I have blogged on this site. I have been a bit overwhelmed finishing my doctoral thesis. However, I hope to contribute to this site throughout 2012. My thesis has been submitted to the second reader and I have a bit of ti...

Promotion-Focused vs. Prevention-Focused

A couple weeks ago, my thesis supervisor was in Muncie for an on-site visit. We reviewed the work of the first few chapters and talked about areas that needed work. One of the oversights was psychosocial research. I assumed that confidence in deci...

In a Hurry One

One of the key truths that I am learning about discernment is that it never ends. It seems that one set of questions leads to the next. Once we have some level of clarity it becomes fuzzy again. We step into coherence only to find more uncertainty...

Examine

It has been almost a month since I have posted. If you have been reading along, you know that we have been carrying out our listening strategy. During this time, we prayed corporately in worship, held a 24 hour prayer vigil, conducted an all-churc...

Changing Behavior

This morning, I was listening to a podcast about leading churches. The interviewee was talking about the need to develop appropriate systems for hiring staff; he was speaking from mega-church experience. One of the phrases that he used was “system...