In August 2022 my wife and I stepped down from our roll as senior pastors of an amazing congregation we had led for over 36 years. When we started this journey in 1986 we had a desire to build something that would outlive us. At that time the norm in our ministry world was pastors moving every four to five years—often seeking a bigger church with better benefits.

This was the question that Jim Essian, a friend and fellow pastor in my city, asked 15 folks around a table in 2017. This was the third question he asked, with building gusto, after receiving rousing and unified responses from his first two questions: “Who believes Fort Worth needs the gospel?” “YES!” “Who believes that church planting is a way that can happen?” “YES!” Then came the climactic moment: “Who’s ready to plant churches together?” …crickets. No response. The air was sucked out of the room. No one was ready to work together.

What is your calling, and how can you celebrate your capacity in it? What is your season, and how can you rightly direct your efforts in it? What are your limits, and how can you embrace them as a gift from God? And, how can you answer these other questions well, both for yourself as well as for others around you?

What happens when these universal struggles with mental health and mental illness occur in the context of ministry? The phrase in ministry distinguishes and intensifies the words mental health and mental illness. Experiencing any mental health struggle, from mild depression to bipolar disorder, in the middle of spiritual ministry to others complicates how such mental struggles play out in our lives. If we could experience our mental health issues in a vacuum, if they didn't affect others around us, we could navigate them with fewer complications. That is, in fact, why, at the most intense moments of mental anguish, people are advised, or even forced, to remove themselves from their normal contexts and relationships to a place dedicated to their recovery. 

As we approach Easter weekend, we want to pause and remember that the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus is truly “good news” – on Easter, yes, and also in everyday life, all year long. But amidst competing worldviews, everyday busyness, and a context that prioritizes values over beliefs, it’s easy to relegate that “good news” to Sundays (or perhaps for some, this one Sunday annually), and live as if other forms of “good news” are better, more impacting, and more applicable to Monday - Saturday life, the rest of the year. 

This experience shaped the past nine years, as I have led national church planting residencies for various organizations. In 2019 and again in 2023, we did a full-scale revision of our residency work. On one hand, The Equipping Group is collaborating with more organizations, churches, and planters than ever before. On the other hand, these revisions came from many lessons learned in training dozens of residents, from many states and beyond, who are now ministering in five countries.

As I reflect on the past eight years and look to the future, I wanted to capture and share five lessons we learned.

Fear and fire shone within this man’s eyes. He sat at a table with fellow Christian leaders. The pastor had asked that I speak to their leadership team about how to follow Jesus in our political moment. It was slowly dawning upon me that by “weapons,” this brother meant physical ones not spiritual.

What do you do as a leader, when things feel like they’re falling apart?
What’s your default response when you feel stretched too thin?
What happens when you can’t “fix” the thousands of things that people want you to fix?

Historically in seasons like these, my default response was to double down, to pile things on my plate, and to take a stronger hold on the things I could control, during the (many more) things I couldn’t.

But that posture only works for so long. Or more truthfully, it only even feels like it works… as I discovered the hard way.

Recently, I was asked to speak to a group of pastors from various countries in Africa. They sent me a series of questions that they wanted me to address, and I sensed that at the heart of a few of their questions was they were measuring of themselves with each other regarding the size of their church. I wonder where they got that from?

A promise of the Bible is that none of us are “everything enough” — because no human but Jesus was ever intended to be enough. No church is “everything enough” to accomplish the beautiful, weighty, spiritual task of sending — because no church without God’s Spirit can accomplish what only God can accomplish. Another promise of the Bible is that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

This year, many churches and leaders will wring their hands in worry about the political process in the United States. One way or another, on one side of the aisle or the other, Christians will be convinced that the destiny of Christianity, the existence of our country, and the state of our world will hinge on the contents of ballot boxes on the first Tuesday in November.

This year, many churches and leaders will wring their hands in worry about the political process in the United States. One way or another, on one side of the aisle or the other, Christians will be convinced that the destiny of Christianity, the existence of our country, and the state of our world will hinge on the contents of ballot boxes on the first Tuesday in November.

Christians throw out the word “gospel” and the phrase “good news” a lot: “The gospel is good news; Jesus is good news.” But to keep these words from being empty, we play a game sometimes in our church gatherings to see if we know how various aspects of Jesus are actually, specifically “good news.” For example, a question I like to ask people regularly is “What was it about Jesus that made the gospel sound like good news to you?”

As the height of the 2020 presidential election season approaches, many Christians are asking important questions about our political responsibility: What policies should I support? Do I vote on party lines or on the issues most important to me? In the midst of a global pandemic and racial tension splintering our society, the stakes feel different this year. But important questions about parties and candidates can easily obscure another question at the heart of our political and spiritual lives: What story am I buying into?