Discipleship requires management as much as leadership
Pastors manage churches as much, if not more, than leading them. Making disciples requires pastors to be involved in the day-to-day operations of a church.
Pastors manage churches as much, if not more, than leading them. Making disciples requires pastors to be involved in the day-to-day operations of a church.
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It’s tempting to imagine that legendary ministers like E. M. Bounds or Andrew Murray or someone known as “Praying Hyde” were simply born to pray. Along with the likes of David Brainerd, Leonard Ravenhill, Armin Gesswein, Bertha Smith, George Müller and so many others, there is a group of Christians who are primarily remembered for their prayer lives or their teaching on prayer. But no one was ever born praying. The men and women most known for prayer were not members of a spiritually elite corps the rest of us weren’t invited to join. They learned to pray.
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One statement from the introduction of Katie McCoy’s book To Be a Woman sets the stage for the conversation our culture is afraid to have but can’t afford to avoid.
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About four years ago, I was a student heavily involved in collegiate ministry, growing in my understanding of Scripture, and being discipled by a woman in our church. However, even as I grew and learned more about the church, I remember asking myself, “Where do I fit in to all this?”
Just a few blocks from the east side of downtown Houston is the cultural home of a longstanding and historic Mexican-American community. Walls are decorated with murals that recount their history. Across town, just west of the first interstate loop is a small commercial district named the Mahatma Gandhi District, an official title granted by the city in 2010. Go a few miles further west down Bellaire Boulevard, and the street signs eventually turn into Chinese.
HOUSTON (BP) – Sending global missionaries is one of my favorite topics of conversation with pastors and church leaders. Having been an international missionary myself, it always does my heart good when a pastor or church leader starts asking questions about how to get engaged in the Great Commission overseas.
RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Let me just come out and say it: pornography is a problem that impacts the mission field. In our #MeToo era, we're used to seeing web articles speaking of the dangers of pornography. We hear -- and it is most certainly true -- that pornography is both the result of and fuel for the objectification of humanity. Pornography makes another human less like a person and more like a snack. And yet, so often our recent reminders on the internet about the dangers of, well, the internet and other peddlers of this smut focus on that young man alone in his bedroom late at night. However, the grip of pornography reaches into more than ...