Bruce Wesley, lead pastor of Clear Creek Community Church in Houston, Texas, spoke on "The Enduring Legacy" of a church planter. He talked about "wells" that church planters need to avoid turning to as well as the rhythms of grace to protect our enjoyment of God.
If your goal is an enduring legacy, ask yourself two questions: Will you last? Will your work last?
As a church planter, your walk with God will happen while Rome is burning and an angry mob is at your door. You will walk with God because you choose every day to act in a way where you can be acted upon by God. If you don’t do this, you will flame out and cave in. In 2 Timothy 2, Paul writes, “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Jesus Christ.” This strength is something that is done to ...
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Posted in: Leadership, Spiritual Vitality
Tags: how to plant a church, how to make it, church planting, surviving church planting, surviving as a pastor, how to survive as a pastor, pastoring pastors, help for pastors, help for church planters, how to endure as a pastor, encouragement for pastor, how to survive ministry, bruce wesley, clear creek community, houston, acts 29
Returning from speaking at the Exposing God conference, pastor Thabiti Anyabwile wrote on his blog what he learned from fellow-speaker CJ Mahaney's teaching. Here is an excerpt of this thoughts.
[CJ Mahaney preaches on 1 Tim: 4-15: "preach the word in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching."]
One thing I've continued to roll over in my head is C.J.'s wise exhortation to be patient with our people's growth in knowledge and sanctification...
What happens when our applications and instamatic sermons don't produce what we want to see overnight? (and they won't) If it's really impatience at work, we'll begin to despair of seeing growth and change. If it's a certain lack of grace in our outlook, we'll miss the gracious ...
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As a pastor and leader of the flock, you know you're supposed to pray. And yet, so often, discouraged by unanswered prayer or the perceived inefficacy of our requests to change any of our circumstances, we leave prayers to the last gasps of conscious breath before drifting to exhausted sleep.
On his blog, Sam Storms writes an insightful and encouraging post from his Colossians series, "The Easiest Thing About Prayer", listing seven reasons to persevere in prayers that seem to be met by silence.
The easiest thing about praying is quitting. Giving up seems so reasonable, so easy to justify. It’s always been that way, which is why Paul wrote in Colossians 4:2, “continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” Persevering in ...
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