Leadership

The Hospitality of Tablecloths, Messes, Scratches, and Scars

There is a buffet drawer in our foyer filled with tablecloths. I don’t know how many there are, but I’m sure there are more than five. There are all different sizes and shapes of tablecloths. I know we have a green one, one has snowflakes. One isn’t even a tablecloth at all, it is a …

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So, You Want to Lead?

Following his “sharp” division with Barnabas, Paul set out with Silas to revisit the churches he and Barnabas started on their first missionary journey. In Acts 16, rather than taking the original route, Paul visited the cities in reverse order, beginning with the region of Derbe and Lystra. There, Paul connected (or reconnected) with a …

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Leadership Is Having the Right Phone Book

I have a friend who owns a 40-foot ladder. I’m really glad that I have a friend who owns a 40-foot ladder because there have been a few times in my life that I needed a 40-foot ladder. I’m also glad that I don’t own a 40-foot ladder because there have been only a few …

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Pandemic Pastoral Priorities: Wading Into Indoor Worship

I know that many churches are wrestling with the same questions we are at Malvern Hill. As a pandemic continues to rage, we have to make decisions about how we will move forward with corporate worship. At Malvern Hill, we have been blessed to be able to be outdoors for worship since Easter while maintaining …

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Worship Isn’t Supposed to Be Safe

As we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, churches all over the U. S. are beginning to return to worship inside their facilities. As they do, each church is forced to wrestle with the realties that being indoors creates a degree of risk for the church body. We are doing that here at Malvern Hill, …

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Navigating Next Steps for Churches

On Sunday, March 8, 2020 I preached a sermon titled, The Apologetic of Fulfilled Scripture from Mark 14. On that Sunday, we forced ourselves out of bed after losing an hour of sleep to daylight savings time, gathered with our LifeGroups, shook hands, hugged friends, and crowded into our sanctuary shoulder to shoulder. We had …

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Pastor, Replanter, or Revitalizer

“When did you decide you wanted to be a revitalizing pastor?” I had to think for a minute. I am blessed to pastor a church that has experienced good revitalization in the past twelve and a half years. We have gone from unhealthy to healthy, we have impacted our community, we have seen lives change, …

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Steps to Broaden Your Ministry Platform

 Many of you who are reading this just came back from the Southern Baptist Convention where you rubbed shoulders with the pastors you want to be just like. If we are honest (and not careful), we will also admit that we rubbed shoulders with some pastors we are jealous of. It can be easy to …

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Face Reality: You Are The Leader

The most important task of any pastor is to clearly and carefully communicate the Word of God with his people on a regular basis. So important is the task of teaching and preaching that it occupies the vast majority of our ministerial training. In my own personal library, my collection of books on preaching takes …

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Discipleship Starts Small

For as long as I have been involved in church leadership, ministry leaders have lamented the lack of discipleship within the local church. To remedy the problem, churches, para-church ministries, and publishing houses introduce new discipleship methods and tools every year or two that are supposed to revolutionize the discipleship process. The problem? After all …

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