As a very young Christian, I was part of a charismatic community that valued the work of the Holy Spirit, and especially the gift of prophesy. Since Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians was to earnestly desire this gift, I prayed and asked God for some kind of wisdom in exercising this gift that would also help me to avoid making a fool of myself or worse yet, be revealed as a public heretic. Read more »
Many ARC churches connected to the Ten Days Before Pentecost prayer focus with a mind toward opening to the influence of the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives. At the conference in April, I highlighted Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost and his reference to the prophecy of Joel (Acts 2:17-18):
17 ”‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
Dear brothers and sisters,
Many of you have just finished the Ten Days Before Pentecost prayer initiative and celebrated the outpouring the Spirit on Pentecost Sunday. I’m not sure how many of you experienced the sound of a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire, but I sincerely hope that your hearts have been opened to the presence and working of the Holy Spirit for greater fruitfulness in the mission that He’s called you to.
Dear brothers and sisters,
It was great to see many of you at the conference last weekend! Often times upon returning home from a conference, someone will ask me, with a wry smile, “Well, was it the best conference ever?”, to which I usually say Read more »
A little over a year ago I spoke at the annual conference of OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship). It was a great opportunity to visit our foreign missionaries, who are presently with a certain people group overseas. I was deeply impressed with the raw dedication of these OMF folk and was particularly taken by
February 2010
One of the more remarkable pieces of my 6-month sabbatical was the opportunity to visit other churches on Sunday mornings or whenever they met. In those 26 weeks, I visited 15 different churches, some of them twice.
As many of you know by now, I will be taking a sabbatical from my pastoral and ministry responsibilities for the last half of 2009 (July through December). This will encompass the entirety of what I presently carry as the senior pastor of Christ Community Church, the president of the ARC, and the leader of Whitewater Ministries. I’d like to fill out that picture for you a bit in this letter and also solicit your prayers.
By the time you receive this I will be off to China and Thailand to connect with two of our missionary couples. I would sincerely appreciate your prayers toward these days. Before I go, I thought I’d pass on some reflections regarding a one-day conference I recently attended entitled, “Relevance.” Read more »
How important is it that we engage genuine generational unity? I am convinced that this is of central significance for your congregation, for the ARC and for the fruitful advance of the Kingdom of God in your city. Okay, let’s throw the world in there too! But . . . I mean it. Read more »
Recently I had a long chat with another brother sorting out the difference between leading and pastoring. It was helpful to me and I wanted to pass on a distillation of that talk to you. Read more »