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Is Good Really the Enemy of Great in the Church?

On Monday, I wrote about a passage in Ephesians that I often find misused. I don’t find it ruin-your-church-worthy, but I do think it is used in such a way that is inconsistent with what I understand it to be saying and with what I understand about church life. Today, I wanted to expand on a leadership saying that those in the church often import without discernment.

(As a disclaimer: I like leadership books and I like leadership talks and I think that they can help church leaders make better decisions. I think it is all part of God’s general revelation into how the world works and how people works, but they aren’t canon and they never should be. )

Continue reading “Is Good Really the Enemy of Great in the Church?”
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A Follow-Up F-260 Thought (and Pastoral Application)

I wrote on Monday on some of my observations about going through a reading plan, memory plan, and preaching plan as a church. I forgot to mention another area where we aligned: our small group discussion. Our groups that meet throughout the week do not have to do a discussion guide that is synced up with the sermon text, but it is provided for them should they want to.

But that isn’t why I’m writing today. Today I wanted to write about a follow-up thought that shows another angle of this aligned approach. This whole plan has been a great discipline for me in how I think about preaching, and I believe it has been good for our church, but there is another side to pursuing corporate disciplines like this and then how to apply it pastorally:

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A Little Past the F-260 Quarter Pole

At Genesis, we are going through the F-260 together. This is a Bible reading plan put out by the great folks at Replicate Ministries. The plan covers five days of reading, generally two chapters per day, and goes through the story of Scripture chronologically.

Along with the reading plan, we are memorizing passages together as a church, and I am preaching a passage every Sunday that we’ve read the prior week (a strategy the Replicate folks had discussed as a way to get more people motivated to stick with the reading plan).

You can see a glimpse of how all that fits together on our website. Now that we are a little more than three months into 2019, I wanted to give a few thoughts on how the process has been.

Continue reading “A Little Past the F-260 Quarter Pole”
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The Benefits of Synced up Family Bible Reading

If you’ve read the blog before then you know that I write about my attempts at family worship. We sing, we read Bible stories, we act out Bible stories, we make up catechism songs, and probably other things. As the kids grow (and Courtney and I age) we change our tactics, so I thought about an update.

In 2018 we are trying something new (to us). With a little help from Replicate Ministries, the family and I have attacked a modified Bible reading plan that puts me, Courtney, and the older two boys reading the same passages and memorizing the same verses. This is a first for us, but it has (one month in to 2018) been incredibly beneficial. Allow me to explain the structure and the benefits: Continue reading “The Benefits of Synced up Family Bible Reading”

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Everything is Redeemable

Last year’s home renovation project was something I had never done before. Removing walls? Not in a million years. Working with carpenters? Plumbers? Sheetrock workers? Painters? Church members who had specific skills? Never done. I was in wayyyyyyyy over my head, and I still haven’t recovered.

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Over the past three weeks I worked on the bathroom pictured above. It was the one part of the house that hadn’t gotten any TLC since we bought it. I really think just about every other square inch of this place got something. But not this bathroom. (The picture above is the “after” picture, not the “before.”)

Well, before the thing got finished, something was bound to go wrong.  Continue reading “Everything is Redeemable”

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Podcast Episode 04—Family Devos

Last week Dale and I spent some time recording this podcast around how we try and lead our families in the hilarity of family devotionals. Two young dads making fools of ourselves and creating memories for our children that we are unsure they will look back on fondly or suppress. As of right now, I think I’d choose suppress. 🙂

If you are counting then you realize that I didn’t post Episode 03. That one is right here, where we tried to talk about religious liberty and modest bathing suits (Burkinis, specifically).