I am currently in Southern California taking part in the Cultivate Conference in Huntington Beach.  This has probably been one of the most significant conferences that I have attended lately, and it has truly been like drinking from a fire hose.  I will share more in the days to come, but I am grateful to Todd Rhoades to putting this conference on my radar last week, and for hooking me up with the ticket. The [...]

Last week I started a series on Team Killers, the attitudes, behaviors, and actions that do more to hurt your team than build it. Today, I want to take a look at over-functioning.  The term over-functioning is one that I was unfamiliar with before attending this year’s Emotionally Healthy Leadership Conference hosted by New Life Fellowship in Queens.  This is a fantastic conference for people who need to learn how to balance out working on [...]

Two weeks ago I started a new series based on my reading list.  You can read about last week’s book here (just because it is about farming doesn’t mean that it doesn’t apply to leading churches).  This week I want to take a look at a book by Gordon MacDonald called Who Stole My Church: What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21st Century. Let me start off by saying [...]

Last week I had the privilege to attend Exponential.  I mentioned my immediate thoughts on Friday, while sitting in the airport, but since that time a few more thoughts have popped into my head.  These thoughts are not directly related to my Exponential experience, but more from the experiences that I have had at each conference that I have attended over the last few years.  My thoughts have been about the idea behind church conferences, the marketing done at these conferences, [...]

Christ has risen! Christ has risen indeed!

People think it odd when I tell them one of my favorite days on the calendar of Christendom is Good Friday. There is a power to this day of shadows. There is a joy to this darkest of days. There is a deep richness to this day of mourning. As we embrace Good Friday, the day commemorating Christ’s last day on earth, I pray that we will take in the ugliness, the horror, and the darkness that [...]

Monday evening we learned of the passing of William Donald Schaefer. Some of you are scratching your head right now trying to figure out who this man is.  My Baltimore friends will recognize his name as a legend of Baltimore, and Maryland, politics.  Schaefer devoted his life to serving the City of Baltimore: first as a City Councilman from 1955-1967, as City Council President (1967-1971), as Mayor (1971-1987), as Governor of Maryland (1987-1995), and finally [...]

Last week my wife and spent the week disconnected from the world, on a boat, cruising around the western Caribbean.  In between snorkeling in Honduras and checking out Mayan ruins in Mexico the down time allowed me to catch up on my reading. My initial intent was for my reading to be strictly for fun, but as I finished the latest Tom Clancy and other fun reads, I found myself being drawn into three other books [...]

Last week in our little downtown area as I was picking up some of the best chili “dawgs” in the county.  I had a brief conversation with a former student and co-worker I had not seen in several months.  We exchanged information on how things are going with our families, mutual friends and careers.  But something unplanned took place in this conversation. I know this person quite well, in fact I encouraged a budding friendship [...]

I think I may have fallen into trap: One-Click Benevolence. With the advent of the modern media machine we are informed constantly of causes and disasters like the recent earthquake and Tsunami in Japan.  Moved by the images of this disaster, and with the help of readily available websites enabling us to contribute to relief efforts, I send contributions by giving online. While it is encouraging and exciting for me to be able to help [...]