The Way Home Podcast: Jen Oshman on Welcoming People into your Church

Today, we have Jen Oshman joining us on The Way Home podcast. Jen is an author, missionary, blogger, and host of the All Things podcast. Today, we discuss the Church, how to be welcoming to others, and her new book Welcome: Loving Your Church by Making Space for Everyone.  If you have questions about what it […]

The Way Home: Collin Hansen on the Embodied Nature of Church

Today, Collin Hansen, editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, joins me again on The Way Home. He’s a prolific writer, author, and podcast host. Collin is a penetrating thinker on church issues and theology and culture. In today’s episode, we talk about his new book “Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential,” what […]

The Way Home: Blair Linne on God as Father

Today, spoken word artist and author Blair Linne joins me on The Way Home Podcast. She is a really gifted communicator and Bible teacher. She has a very powerful personal story, and today we talk about her latest book “Finding My Father: How the Gospel Heals the Pain of Fatherlessness” and the problem of fatherlessness. […]

The Way Home: Dave Harvey on the plurality principle

On this episode of The Way Home podcast, Dave Harvey, a long-time pastor and author, joins me to talk about his latest book “The Plurality Principle.” We talk about what it means for a church to have a plurality of leadership—leadership that is not just centered in one person—and what that looks like practically within […]

The Way Home: Scotty Smith and Russ Masterson on pastoring in this season

In this episode of The Way Home podcast I am joined by Scotty Smith, pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, and Russ Masterson, pastor of Christ the Redeemer Church of Marietta, Georgia. We talk about the pressures and burdens on pastors in this season. We also discuss how pastors can find hope and comfort and […]

Preaching and Baseball

In an article for Leadership Journal, I compare ministry to baseball. Pastors have a tendency to “swing for the fences” with every sermon, but we’re better off working hard on the little things of preaching in order to give our people a lifetime of good spiritual food: Ministry is very much like baseball in this way. […]

People Want a Church to Be a Church

This week I had a chance to interview Brett McCracken. Brett teaches at Biola and is a keen cultural observer. I’ve always enjoyed his work. He has written two books. The first, Hipster Christianity created quite a splash when it came out. He pushed back against the attempt by the Church to be “cool.” Recently Brett […]

God’s Purpose and Mental Illness

Today, for my weekly Leadership Journal Interview, I had the chance to talk with Amy Simpson, author of the new book, Troubled Minds. I asked her about some of the misconceptions we have about mental illness. Among her answers was this very hopeful one: Many people also mistakenly believe that people with mental illness are doomed […]

Why Going to Church on Sunday is An Act of War

Okay, so maybe that title is a bit melodramatic. But I wanted to get your attention, because I think faithful, weekly attendance at your local gospel-preaching church is important. It’s important for all the reasons we know, right? To hear the Word preached. To develop community in the body of Christ. To exercise your spiritual gifts. To […]

What Evangelism Is

I’m highly skeptical of mechanics. If you are one, I’m sorry, but I think you probably realize that it goes with the trade. It’s this way with pastors, too, so perhaps we can commiserate some time. But there is one shop in our community who does exceptional work, whose proprietors rise above the usual price-gouging […]

Friday Five: Paul Rude

Last week I read an excellent article on the Gospel Coalition blog on the significance of everyday work. At times, pastors and ministry professionals tend to cast “secular” vocations as a sort of second-tier calling. I loved Paul’s perspective and asked him to join me today for a chat around this topic and his new […]

What We Don’t Want to Hear: Leadership Is Hard

We live in an age when distrust of leaders is, perhaps, at an all-time high. I don’t have any statistics to verify that. However, if my Facebook and Twitter feeds are a reasonable sample, if the blogs and columns and books I read are an indication, people today just don’t like the people who lead […]