Yogi Berra was an incredibly successful manager in baseball, but to many people he’s better known for his malapropisms. Some of his sayings are priceless–though to a writer such torture of the language can make you cringe.  I was recently reminded of a Yogi-ism spoken after the Yankees had lost a game: “We made too [...]

We talk a lot about the importance of being true disciples fulfilling our calling to spend time in service to others. But did you know studies indicate that living externally focused lives actually increases our happiness? Many studies back this up, but I’ll just mention a couple that relate to two groups of people that [...]

Last year Michael Phelps amazed the world at the Olympics.  Multiple world records and more gold medals than anyone had ever earned at a single Olympics.  Shortly thereafter, he shocked the world again when he was seen smoking marijuana.  This year at the world championships he once again returned to winning race form. So what’s [...]

Seth Godin said something that really struck me: “If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.”  Say what?  Aren’t we all supposed to be finding our sweet spot where everything is flowing comfortably?  Isn’t that the purpose of all the assessments we [...]

I had an interesting conversation with the vice president of sales and marketing at Five & Two Pictures. They are a Christian film company that is trying a new business model that bypasses Hollywood distributors and embraces a concept that resonates with today’s attitudes of viral marketing and social networking. Put simply, they have decided [...]

Okay, it won’t be available until September 2 but I have to give my followers the benefit of advance notice! The authors of the best-selling book The Externally Focused Church have transformed the vision of tens of thousands of church leaders to making more of a difference in the community. Now Rick Rusaw and Eric [...]

At Group Publishing we had our monthly All-Staff meeting today. One of the things we did was pray over a new resource called God Sightings to commission it for churches. (It’s a fantastic product encouraging people to read through the Bible and discuss how they see God showing up in their lives.) In the process [...]

In my column in the September issue of The Inside Track I’m going to be talking about some excuses leaders make for trying to do too much of the work themselves rather than equipping and blessing others into their ministry. I’ll give my blog followers a sneak peek at one of them: “Nobody else will [...]

Seth Godin uses the wonderful line “shaving the bear.”  It comes from a (presumably hypothetical–possibly inspired by this video) conversation about the problem of global warming and its affect on all aspects of life–including the viability of some species (such as polar bears) geared for the cold.  One wag suggested shaving the bears’ fur off.  [...]

In an intriguing YouTube video, John Piper talks about the use of drama and video to supplement preaching. In his words, doing so demonstrates an unbelief in the power of preaching. As someone passionate about preaching, it got me thinking. Why do so many churches today use videos and dramas as part of what used [...]