Church Leader Gazette - Encouraging Pastors & Church Leaders to Fulfill the Great Commission

How Is It with Your Soul? by Ruth Haley Barton

"But what does it profit a person if they gain the whole world but lose their own soul? What is worth more than your soul?" Matthew 16:26

Several years ago, during an unusually intense season of ministry, I made a comment to a friend that surprised us both. Before I could censor my thoughts, I heard myself saying, "I'm tired of helping other people enjoy God; I just want to enjoy God for myself."

Denying Yourself, by John MacArthur

"I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed" (Dan. 9:4).

In Luke 18 Jesus told a parable to people who were trusting in their own self-righteousness. He said, "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer. The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, 'God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.'

Like a coach, the pastor's biggest job is turning his team into winners. The second is keeping them winners. I've sometimes thought the reason professional football is more satisfying to follow than college ball--and I confess to loving both--is that the makeup of the college teams keeps changing as players graduate. In the NFL, they can stay around as long as they're able to play at a high level. Read More.

Small Groups and the Mission of God, by Alan Hirsch

What does the term missional mean to you?

Well, that's one of those very difficult terms because it's so widely used. But for me, it primarily refers to a church that organizes itself around the mission of God, or the misseo dei, which refers to God's involvement in the world--his redeeming it to himself. In The Forgotten Ways, I say that it's not so much that the church has a mission, but that the mission has a church. So when I think of the term "missional church," it's in that order--that a church has somehow bonded itself or identified itself as a primary agent of the mission of God in the world.