As you near the end of your leadership career, you will likely look back over a mixed bag of decisions – some good, some bad. You will also look back over countless situations where you chose a course of action when the options were muddled and the consequences unclear. In other cases, the...
Building healthy relationships throughout your community demonstrates the authenticity of the Christian faith. When your actions in public, at work, and at home reveal Jesus – your words about Jesus will receive a much more receptive hearing.
Maintaining right relationships, including (but also broader than) personal moral purity, is an essential part of preserving your legacy. Transparency with others, keeping short accounts of wrongs committed, letting love cover egregious behavior, and sacrificing personal preferences to...
The most recent statistical report for the past year of ministry by the churches in the Southern Baptist Convention has been released. The news is not good. As a denomination, we continue our multi-year decline on the most important indicator of our spiritual health – baptisms.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services recently issued new directives for foster care providers related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Their instructions, given the changing understanding about those issues today, were not surprising. What caught my attention was the...
Why is Gateway Seminary here? I don’t mean in the macro or mission sense, but literally, why is our primary campus here – in Ontario, California?
Leaders are supposed to be mature people who approach their role as adults. There are many people today – in all fields, not just politics – who lead more like children. We need more adults in the room!
It’s graduation season at Gateway. That’s an apt descriptor because we have five graduations across the West every May – allowing graduates to participate in the service of their choosing at any of our five campus locations. This year we have 201 total graduates, which is a smaller number for us.
My weekend-world and weekday-world reveal the disconnect that sometimes exists between seminary conversations and real-world concerns. This past weekend was a good reminder of what it means to prepare people for leadership in local churches. I spoke at a men’s conference with attendees from...
One contemporary trend in worship services is turning the lights down on the congregation during the service. This has the effect of focusing the attention on the stage, much like happens in a theater. The goal is well-intended – minimizing distraction among the audience – but actually has a...