Journal

Christina Walker works for the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism. A couple of years ago she took part in a research project studying effective outreach of churches. The findings: The first and most important activity of effectively evangelistic churches is to offer a welcoming, inclusive environment most importantly on a Sunday morning. When I was coaching churches who had taken the Natural Church Development survey, not one church thought they were “unwelcoming” even though the survey, which they filled out, indicated…

In the fifth chapter of Luke Jesus tells the disciples to “put out in deep water.” The disciples are tired, they have fished all day and not caught anything. They really don’t want to spend the effort and energy only to come up empty once again. Yet, because Jesus asks them to, they obey and they experience a catch so miraculous it almost sinks their boats. Simon Peter’s response is to fall at the feet of Jesus. He realizes Jesus’…

With the coming of December, many people’s thoughts are focused on Christmas. The town of Prosperity has already started decorating, the stores have set out specialty items, parties will be aplenty and “goodwill” towards our brothers and sisters reaches a yearly high. Of course the church is no different. Without Christmas, the coming of God’s Son to earth, our worship of God and our relationship with Him would be quite different. I picked up a book this past week about…

November is the month when our nation takes a day to give thanks for the blessings that we have. We know this is something that we shouldn’t do just one day a year, but should do each and every day because we have so much to be thankful for. I guess there are many reasons why we fail to give thanks, but one of those stems from the false idea that we are not blessed “enough.” What I mean by…

It’s football season and if you watch a football game you will definitely hear the announcers talk about which team has the momentum. “Momentum” is a physics concept, when an object has momentum it continues to move in the same direction and the more momentum and more mass behind the object, the harder it is to stop. Think of a locomotive. Something that large is hard to stop even when it appears to be moving slowly. And when it picks…