For ninety-nine cents I couldn't pass it up. That's how much paperbacks cost at Goodwill. Granted, most of them are worth about ninety-nine cents. Romance novels, even less. Not this one. This particular book did for me something few books ever do: it changed the way I live. It did so by changing the way I viewed Jesus. As a teenager, for the first time, Jesus became a living, breathing person to me. With words and images, it painted color between the black and white lines of scripture. It was Max Lucado's "No Wonder They Call Him the Savior". Over the years, I have given copies of this book to new believers and non-believers alike. As my two daughters have grown older, I have thought about getting them a copy as well. And there it was -- for only ninety-nine cents. My oldest is about the age when I first…
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David Feinleib has started five companies and works as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. His book, "Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed", offers good advice to anyone starting a business -- or a new church. He has thirteen principles; I'll share just a few and direct my comments towards church planting. (To read a good summary of all thirteen, click here). There's no place for your product. On the one hand, there are few places in the United States that have too many churches. We'll agree to that. But what if you're answering questions no one (at least the non-believer) is asking? What if your style of worship doesn't fit your neighborhood? Then ... there's no place for your product. Your product stinks (OK, he said sucks). This is not about performance or perfection; it is about doing the best you can with what you have. In…
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Our Friday morning men's group is studying the book of James. Today we were in chapter two and covered these verses: "My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?" (James 2:1-4) James touches on a common human tendency: to want to impress those who impress you. In so doing, we often look down on those who don't impress us. It's why "average" people fawn over celebrities and then turn around and treat rudely…
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This is from the Wall Street Journal Blog. It's about how the advertising industry understands habit formation. Implications for your ministry or job? ********* "Ninety-nine hundredths of our activity is purely automatic," the psychologist and philosopher William James famously wrote. "All of our life is nothing but a mass of habits." James was pointing out that, though we give habits little thought, they define our lives: how much we eat, save or spend, how often we trek to the gym and what we say to our kids each night. But these compulsions aren't inscribed in our genes or hard-wired into the brain at birth. Scientists are discovering that habits are simply an extreme form of learning, a behavior that's so familiar we no longer need to think about it. The malleability of habits isn't news to Madison Avenue: Effective commercials show how people can be quickly trained to do something…
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