Category Archives: Recent Posts

Disciplines of a Steward Leader

For the past four years I have been writing and speaking about the steward leader.  I believe it is the most transformational understanding of leadership I have ever encountered.  Over the next several weeks I will share with you nine disciplines that mark the life of a steward leader.  I hope they inspire and challenge you to greater faithfulness and joy in whatever undertaking God is calling you. Steward leaders succeed because they are .
read more

Preparing our Heart for Lent – Meditation #3

Our Position in the Presence of God – Mathew 27:46 Our third meditation on this text considers the emphasis, “why have you forsaken me?”  If we are honest, this is the version with which we most closely identify.  It is not just the forsakenness, or the fact that it is happening for some reason, or even that it comes from a loving God.  It is the fact that it is happening to me! The result .
read more

Preparing our Heart for Lent – Meditation #2

The Character of God – Mathew 27:46 We are looking at the different interpretations of this text that come from the way the key words are emphasized.  In the first devotion we looked at, “why have you forsaken me?” and we contemplated the purposes of God.  Here we will look at, “why have you forsaken me?”  This is a question of the character of God.  It is direct, stinging and personal.  It skirts the universal, .
read more

Preparing our Heart for Lent – Meditation #1

The Purpose of God – Mathew 27:46, “Why have you forsaken me?” Have you ever played the game where you take a simple sentence and see how the meaning changes when you change the emphasis?  Start with, “Why did you eat that apple?”  Now read it as, “Why did you eat that apple?” or “Why did you eat that apple?” or “why did you eat that apple?” or even “why did you eat that apple?”  .
read more

Top Five Regrets, and One Great Opportunity

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their .
read more

Coming Home

The comment caught me completely off-guard.  I was proudly showing a colleague my new truck; a sleek black Dodge Ram 2500 long bed with a V8 Hemi engine that my kids named Darth Vader.  Instead of the expected words of admiration, however, this friend just retorted, “You are really supporting terrorism with that thing.”  He said it with a smile, but I heard the seriousness in his tone. What took me back was not .
read more

Oh, the Joys (???) of Business Travel

Several years ago I experienced a week of travel that can only be described as a descent into madness.  It’s a little long, but I thought you might enjoy my ‘travelogue’. I entitled it, ‘So, how was your week?’ If you would indulge me for a few moments I would like to tell you how my week went.  Let me start by saying that I have only three iron-clad rules of travel: 1 – never check .
read more

Would you Untie your Colt?

My favorite story from Scripture about faithful asking and generous giving may surprise you. It comes from Luke, Chapter 19 beginning at the 28th verse. “And after Jesus had said this he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem.  As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives he sent two disciples saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you and as you enter it you will .
read more

American Idol

I heard a quote yesterday (Stewardship Summit in Portland) that an idol is, “something you go to for comfort instead of God.” Where do we seek our comfort, assurance and security?  We have a lot of idols in America.  Sports is an idol, but we immerse ourselves in sports to connect with a passion that we have lost in our work and marriages.  We have sex as an idol, but we are obsessed with .
read more

How Thick is the Ice Under Your Feet?

In the late 1800’s a Montana fur trapper is running out of supplies during a particularly brutal Rocky Mountain winter.  Growing desperate, he realizes he must make his way down to the nearest town to buy food or he will not survive. He sets out through an early morning blizzard and trudges all day through waist-deep snow.  At dusk, he can just make out the lights of the town in the distance, but as .
read more