Pastor, what is it like being married to you?
What is it like to be married to you? Is it like being married to a celebrity? Or is it like being married to a servant?
Resources for Emotional Health
The importance of rest in church planting
I wanted to reach people. I wanted to grow the church. I wanted to make an impact. But I didn't recognize what I was doing.
3 Ways to love your spouse well on the church planting journey
What’s at stake if we plant a successful church, but fail in our marriage?
Every good church leader has this quality
There’s one characteristic in a church leader that’s invaluable to the church but isn’t easily quantified.
Church planting as spiritual fathering
“For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I...
You don’t have to be a pastor to be part of church planting
By Ryan Paterson Each of us had been involved in ministry for a number of years...
Spreading good news through an ice truck
God has no problem changing our plans. Like many churches, Redemption Road Church in Phoenix, Arizona,...
Phoenix church rediscovers the power of gratitude
“Thank you.” When you’ve had weeks of long hours and sleepless nights, these two simple words...
3 Essential leadership qualities amid hurt and turmoil
By Dhati Lewis The foreseeable future of church planting seems uncertain. We don’t know or have...
3 Myths we believe about our grief
By Dhati Lewis The past few weeks have been brutal. Our communities across the nation are...
Portland church serves as port-a-potty pitstop for homeless people
“Wash your hands” is the emphatic message we’ve all heard since the infamous COVID-19 virus forced...
Pastor, you need to process your grief too
Last week was a hard week. It began with the public release of a cell phone...
Healing from Trauma in a Divided Nation
Living in a Genesis 3 world has lasting effects on our lives. We easily see the...
3 Ways to Improve Your Emotional and Spiritual Health
LEER EN ESPAÑOL What do you do when you have reached the end of yourself? Your...
Never Alone: How to Avoid Isolation in Church Planting
Church planting can be a lonely work. It’s amazing that a venture in which people are...
How to plant your church without losing your spouse: Pay attention
If we are discussing “How to plant your church without losing your spouse,” the most significant...
Brotherhood success stories: Ryan Rice
I never wanted to move back to New Orleans. It was truly a supernatural move of...
Brotherhood success stories: How brotherhood is accomplished
A significant part of the brotherhood I have experienced was an inherited grace. I take no...
9 characteristics of a church planter: Emotional and spiritual health
Church planting is a not a young man’s sport, nor an old man’s sport. It’s a healthy man’s...
The Emotionally Healthy Planter: Fears
Perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn 4:18). The promise presupposes certain realities. First, fear is...
The Emotionally Healthy Planter: Family
Where’d that come from? We’ve probably all asked this question from time to time. Something happens...
Why adoption is supposed to be hard: Part 3
What we are finding is that there is a special joy that comes from sharing in...
Why adoption is supposed to be hard: Part 2
As hard as this process has been so far—here is what we are learning, slowly and...
Why adoption is supposed to be hard: Part 1
This series of posts was originally written in November 2016. We have been home from China...
The emotionally healthy planter: Discouragement and 4 ways to combat it
The sun doesn’t shine much in Portland, but on this day the clouds surrendered and the...
The Emotionally healthy planter: Fear and 3 ways to combat it
Church planting is, in part, fueled by faith—expressed in prayer, godly risk-taking and faithful labor. And...
The Emotionally Healthy Planter: Anger
We don’t simply need to plant more churches, we need to plant healthy churches. A healthy...
Developing brotherhood in your city: Why and how it’s successful
Ninja strike teams When I was a kid, we used to jump all over the playground...
Developing brotherhood in your city: Why you need it
Not Karate All over the world, people are being trained in the martial arts. That said,...
The planter as generalist: Counseling
Anyone that has ever attempted to start a business quickly learned this truth: There is a...
Friendship and the pastor’s wife: In friendship, resist the discomfort of receiving
On my first Sunday as a pastor’s wife, a college girl approached me with a question...
How to keep a healthy perspective as a pastor’s wife
I was standing at the door after church, talking with folks, when a woman who’d been...
How to encourage your wife while planting a church
Regardless of where you are in your church planting journey, chances are you know how essential...
Free guide: How to build a successful marriage
The majority of Christians I meet like the idea of church planting conceptually but would never...
Where is church planting in the Bible?
The majority of Christians I meet like the idea of church planting conceptually but would never...
The Bible speaks about the reality of a conflict we face as believers, and we popularly...
Another year brings with it the history of story after story of pastors who are removed...
How to navigate through dark days
The dark days we experience as pastors bring many difficulties. But maybe one of the most...
Navigating dark days: Spiritual sickness
I’m not exactly sure how I got there. I assume there were numerous factors that caused...
How to find freedom from regret
Regret is as deadly as worry. One confronts an unknown future, the other an unfortunate past....
Navigating dark days: Dark places
“The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in...
Several years ago, I was asked to share with a group of missionaries in Chili about...
We all have spiritual heroes. We admire these leaders God has placed in our path, even...
Christians understand the necessity of burden-bearing relationships. We know that we are broken, sinful men and...
Brotherhood: Giving encouragement
All ministry is hard and church planting is typically harder. Obstacles abound within the church planting...
For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with approval. The question, “What do people...
How to manage power as a church planter
You will be your own boss. Starting a church is like starting a business. In the...
People with a natural passion and ability to keep plants alive are said to have a...
The Planter’s Wife in Community: Challenges
Odds are, when your wife joined you on the journey of church planting, she left her...
The Planter’s Wife in Community: Intentionality and Cultivation
Community requires intentionality and cultivation Think of something that happens quickly. A roller coaster ride. A...
The Planter’s Wife in Community: Openness and Vulnerability
For the first eight years of our ministry at an established church, I didn’t have a...
The Planter’s Wife in Community
She Needs Community “Lonely and isolated” are words that many ministry leaders, male and female, use...
The Planter in Community: Defer Leadership
A few years back I attended a missions conference and struck up a conversation with a...
The Planter in Community: No Masks Allowed
I was in the middle of small group when I got the barrage of text messages....
The Pastor in Community: You Need It
I remember sitting at a conference for a particular church planting network. We had reached the...
An Important Question to Ask Ourselves
What is your greatest insecurity? It’s a good question to ask yourself, but it’s not so...
The importance of prioritizing as a church planter
This summer I stood in front of a room full of church planting wives and took...
Why spousal support from pastors is important
One of the more pleasant surprises of this blog the past few years is the opportunity...
On the playground of spiritual disciplines fasting gets picked last, and sometimes not at all if...
You don’t have to be or live in the city in order to understand the concept...
There’s something about becoming a professional Christian (aka pastor, church planter, missionary, etc…) that makes the...
Every first Sunday of the month, as a church, we take communion together. Before we take...
Our culture is sick with busyness and constant connectedness. Almost everyone seems exhausted just trying to...
Let’s just put this reality on the table: many church leaders struggle with prayer. We know...
Living in the Word: Bible Intake for Church Planters I was a new believer, and my...
Abide: Introduction to John 15:5
Imagine you are listening to a sermon and the preacher asks “How many of you truly...
Stories of Doubt: Kent Bateman
Stories of doubt from an apprentices’ perspective Send Network: Tell us about the church you are...
Send Network: Tell us about your church plant and when you all started meeting. Andy Hall:Redemption...
Stories of Doubt – Jeff Phillips
At the immense risk of sounding negative, this reality is true when it comes to church...
Putting God first: Leading my family
The heresy of the evangelical order A divine order has become almost sacrosanct in evangelical subculture;...
Putting God first: Leading myself
The most difficult person that you will ever have to lead is yourself. You are a...
Most of us are safe and we like to stay that way within the confines of...
The following blog is an excerpt from Paul David Tripp’s regular blog which can be found...
The following blog is an excerpt from Paul David Tripp’s regular blog which can be found...
Jonah 3:1 – God’s grace gives us a fresh start
The following blog is an excerpt from Paul David Tripp’s regular blog which can be found...
Counseling tools: Recoverig from addiction
The Darkness Runs Deep I’ve done recovery ministry for six years, and it didn’t take long for...
Radically Unprepared I was in the 10th grade when I had my first real brush with...
Porn wreaks havoc on every church. Some people cower in shame and fear, hoping that they...
How to stay healthy in the ministry
A few years ago I felt the itch to do something I had never done before....
Of witness and fitness When planting a church, fitness doesn’t tend to show up on the...