I closed my last post with this sentence: If you want to lead successfully, Jesus must first lead you! To lead well and bear fruit, you must be connected to the Vine (John 15:5). Another way of illustrating  this is to imagine your life as a glass. As a spiritual leader, your main job is to be in a position …

What do you want to be known for? What would you want people to say about you after you die? At different stages of my life I would have responded to that question differently. As a kid growing up in Cincinnati, I wanted to be known as a great athlete, like Pete Rose or Oscar Robertson. My athletic career was …

The most vital mark of kingdom leadership is a leader’s relationship with God. And that’s the second sign of a healthy small group: a healthy growing leader. The apostle Paul prayed for his Ephesian friends that “Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the …

I’ve been talking about the first sign of a healthy small group. It must be Christ-centered. Heather Zempel (at right) put it so well in her blog November 23. Check it out: “The disciples didn’t lay their lives down for a cause but for a person.” That’s how Dave Buehring kicked off his talk on the Ways of God at …

For those of you outside of Northeast Christian, we are now on Day 2 of a food challenge, eating just a small amount of rice and beans for lunch and dinner (and maybe 1 tortilla) and oatmeal for breakfast. We’re doing this as a church as an act of solidarity with those who live in the bottom economic half of …

I am not the leader of our small group. I’m not trying to get out of anything. I’m not passing the buck. It’s just that a group can only have one real leader, and I’m not it. In my last blog, I wrote about the importance of a small group being “Christ-centered.” What’s even more important is that the leadership …

Healthy small groups are like Tootsie Pops. The most important part is what’s at it’s center. I was thinking about this analogy and the tract that contrasts two ways of living life, represented by two circles: the self-directed and Christ-centered life. Here’s the illustration from the Campus Crusade web site: What’s at the center of these circles determines the kind …

Today I came across a great blog post by DeAntwan Fitts, pastor of Peace Chapel in Los Angeles, titled “Five Stages of a Healthy Small Group.” Great post, and a very necessary part of what I’m discussing here. DeAntwan begins his post, Healthy small groups do not just happen. They are the result of the leader being INTENTIONAL about moving …

Question #1: Is your group healthy? A healthy group is a group that will naturally grow, develop, bear fruit, and reproduce. Question #2: How do you know if your group is healthy or not? Last spring I wanted to answer the second question so I could help our groups answer the first one. So I thought and prayed and asked …

The other day I was listening to a sermon by Chip Ingram in which he compared authentic community to an “ecosystem” (a link to the MP3 can be found at the bottom of this blog entry). I like this comparison. For years I’ve taught that authentic Christian community is the “environment” or “culture” where people grow best. I used to …