When it comes to developing the leadership capacity of younger leaders, much of it is simply a matter of spending time with them. No agenda. No curriculum. Just time. Over time, relationships develop. Over time, thoughts and feelings are share. By spending time with a younger leader, you're allowing them to hear your dreams and to voice their own. Did you know that over 50 percent of Jesus' teachings were instigated by someone else?* It was a person asking a question or a father asking Jesus to heal his daughter. In other words, Jesus let other people set the agenda more often than not. When you spend time with a younger leader, you'll find yourself sharing some of your best teaching nuggets in response to a life situation they are facing. * This is from "Inductive Preaching" by Lewis and Lewis.
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Back in 2001, God placed a clear call on my life when he answered my prayer for life goals with three very specific items: To be a part of a church planting church. To help reach my generation for Jesus. To invest myself in the next generation of church leaders. Those three over-arching goals set in motion a series of events and decisions that radically altered the course of my life. We planted LifePoint Christian Church in San Diego in response to the first of those life goals. Since then, we have joined up with Mountainview Church in Denver to help them live out the vision of adding new churches and campuses. But it's the third goal that I've been thinking about lately: to help develop the next generation of church leaders. There was a time in my life when I was the next generation of church leaders (I'd like…
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It's confession time. Saturday morning I woke up, worked out, and decided to stop at the grocery store before going home. Why? Because I've developed this unreasonable attraction to King Sooper's chocolate donuts. Not the puffy, glazed variety. But the solid, devil's food cake. So ... I went through checkout with a dozen donuts, three cases of diet drinks, and a copy of the Denver Post. In my sweat pants.
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Last night and this morning we're giving people the chance to send me a live text message during my sermon. Using a shortcode, they can text their answer to a question on the big screens and have it routed in real-time to my laptop on stage. I can scroll through the texts and choose which ones to pop on the screen. It was fun last night seeing what people answered to this question: "What is it about Christians that turns off non-believers?" Many of the answers had to do with having a judgmental attitude, hypocrisy, being pushy, not willing to listen, etc. My favorite was one word: meanieheadness. OK, it might not be an actual word, but you get the point.
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The Gallup organization released these numbers just before Christmas: 78% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. In 1948, 91% of Americans identified with a Christian faith. Twenty years ago, in 1989, 82% of Americans identified as Christian. Ten years ago, it was 84%. This year, as noted, 78% of all American adults identify with a Christian faith. To read the entire article, click here.
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