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4 Leadership Lessons from Gethsemane

Noah Oldham

Years ago, I saw a meme that showed a dog chasing a bird off a cliff, mouth open, ready to bite. The caption said, “Some decisions made in anger can’t be undone.”  That meme has stuck with me. Because it’s funny until it’s not.  It’s funny...
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3 Criteria for a Healthy Men’s Ministry

Barnabas Piper

Traditional men’s ministry is activity-centric with a heavy (literally) dose of food thrown in. Or maybe it’s food-centric with an activity as the primary excuse to gather and eat. And for good reason—shared activity (games, sports, projects, etc.) and good...
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4 Axioms from Spurgeon’s Leadership

J.A. Medders

Our lives are filled with axioms. These truisms, even if overstated, make a helpful point that’s easy to remember.  In the world of sports, we hear, “Your best ability is availability.” I love this axiom. A great player who is always injured hurts his...
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5 Principles for Hiring Staff

Luke Simmons

“What do I need to be thinking about when it comes to staffing?” As I coach church planters, this question comes up again and again. Hiring and building a staff is an area of leadership that most church planters are...
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4 Steps of a Discipleship Pathway

Vick Green

What are the essential steps that are needed to move someone from being a new believer to becoming your dream disciple? I want to give you four essential steps to your pathway and then show you the one that nearly every church is missing.   Ken Blanchard identified four stages...
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Legacy Over Platform: Six Things That Will Outlast Your Sermons

Jon Kelly

In an age where sermons can be downloaded, clipped, shared, and forgotten within hours, it is easy for pastors and church planters to think that our primary influence comes through our preaching. Preaching certainly matters. Faith comes by hearing the...
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Church Planter Identity Crisis

Will Basham

Most Americans don’t just work; we tend to derive identity from our work. Secular research confirms what many of us already feel: our careers don’t simply provide income; they shape our sense of self. It’s no surprise that this is the case when we live in a...
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Fewer Women Are Going to Church. Here’s How Church Plants Can Fix It.

Rivers Partin

Recent research has brought to light a deeply concerning shift: for the first time in decades, women are attending church less than men.   For those who care about the spiritual health of our neighbors, this is heavy. For those of us in...
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Your Calling Can’t be Calculated: Assessments and Almost Moments in Church Planting

Noah Oldham

I’ll never forget the day my sending church pastor walked into my office with an email in his hand. He said, “We got your score back from the church planting assessment— specifically your entrepreneurial score. It came back a 38.”...
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3 Things the Storms of Life Help Us See

Ronnie Martin

The first of the year equals desperate times for people in the Midwest. All of the whimsical, Christmas snow that fell so delicately a month before has now turned into piles of icy despair sprinkling the landscape. A 50-degree day...
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6 Reasons to Start a Men’s Ministry

Barnabas Piper

In a church plant, it is hard to know what to emphasize, what to pour your energy into. There are the non-negotiables like preaching, member care, and evangelism (although how you go about evangelism is a whole other pile of questions)....
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Overcoming Discouragement

Adam Muhtaseb

Have you ever been truly discouraged?  Not mildly frustrated. Not just worn out after a long week. But the kind of discouragement that makes you quietly wonder, “Can I actually keep going?”  Several years into planting in Baltimore, I hit that wall. ...
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3 Elements of Spurgeon’s Spiritual Leadership

J.A. Medders

Leadership is influence toward a goal.   This simple definition applies to NFL teams chasing the Super Bowl, businesses seeking to increase sales, and church planters and church-planting teams.   Planter, you are a spiritual leader. Spiritual leadership is influence toward the biblical...
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Beyond Results-Driven Ministry

Dan Steel

Since before Christmas, two related but separate conversations have served as a proverbial stone in my shoe. They both got me thinking about our “functional” authority when it comes to church planting models and expectations. The first was with a...
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The Quiet Theology of Your Calendar

Will Basham

I wake up every morning and generally have no idea what I’m doing on any given day. I’m not referring to my general cluelessness about life (although that does exist more often than I’d like to admit). I’m referring to the busyness that seems to captivate many of my days. And, particularly...
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The Missing Ingredient in Most Church Plants

Luke Simmons

Lately, my house smells incredible.   My 17-year-old daughter is in her “sourdough era,” and we are loving it. (When parents warn you about your kids’ “phases,” nobody says this is even possible!)   Warm, tangy sourdough makes for a comforting...
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Social Media Wisdom for Church Planters

Jon Kelly

One of the first things that a church planter does in the early stages of planting a church is set up a social media account for the church. This ability to mass communicate is helpful for engaging our context and...
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The Discipleship Question

Barnabas Piper

“What do you guys do for discipleship?”    This is a question that pastors frequently get from new people in their churches. At a church plant, they especially want to know what the plans are. For many people, discipleship is a...