It’s been said that teamwork makes the dream work. That’s true for any organization, but it’s especially true for churches. After all, the business of Church isrelationship—with God and with others.
Unfortunately, many churches experience relational dysfunction in the leadership team, the congregation as a whole, or both. They also often fail to realize the vision for the Church laid out by Christ in the Great Commission. In High Impact Teams, Lance Witt explains why churches don’t have to choose between relationships and results. He then shows how to bring those two things together for greater effectiveness in ministry.
Witt is founder of Replenish, a ministry with two goals: (1) to help individuals live and lead from a healthy soul and (2) to teams and organizations become healthy and high-performing. Before launching Replenish, he served twenty years as a senior pastor and six years as an executive and teaching pastor for Rick Warren at Saddleback Church.
He’s the guest on Episode 157 of the Influence Podcast, which is hosted by George P. Wood, executive editor of Influencemagazine.
Psalm 23 is one of the best recognized and most loved passages of Scripture. For three millennia, its words have comforted believers in good times and bad.
In his new book, Grace in the Valley, Heath Adamson explores a baker’s dozen of lessons the psalm teaches about life and ministry under the Shepherdhood of God.
Heath Adamson serves as chief of staff at Convoy of Hope, “a faith-based, nonprofit organization with a driving passion to feed the world through children’s feeding initiatives, community outreaches and disaster response.” He also serves in leadership roles for Empowered21’s Next Gen Networkand the Next Generation Commissionof the World Assemblies of God Fellowship.
Publishers harvested a bumper crop of atheist book in 2006 and 2007. Letters to a Christian Nationby Sam Harris, The God Delusionby Richard Dawkins, Breaking the Spellby Daniel C. Dennett, and God Is (Not) Greatby Christopher Hitchens come readily to mind, among many others. Each of these book claimed in one way or another that belief in God was intellectually deficient, a matter of faith rather than reason.
The philosophers who contributed to Two Dozen (or So) Arguments for Godbeg to differ. They think there are good reasons to believe that God exists. In Episode 155 of the Influence Podcast, Influencemagazine executive editor George P. Wood talks to Jerry L. Walls about good arguments for God.
Walls is Scholar in Residence and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University, as well as co-editor with Trent Dougherty of Two Dozen (or So) Arguments for God, which is published by Oxford University Press.
Hospitality is a Christian virtue. “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers,” Hebrews 13:2 tells us, “for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” According to the apostle Paul, one of the requirements for holding church office is being “hospitable” (1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:8). At minimum, hospitality means providing food and shelter for those in need.
But what if that’s only the start? What if hospitality is a mindset that has multiple expressions affecting every aspect of leadership? That’s the question Influencemagazine executive editor George P. Wood explores with Terry A. Smith in Episode 154 of the Influence Podcast.
Terry A. Smith is lead pastor of The Life Christian Churchin West Orange, New Jersey, as well as author of The Hospitable Leader: Create Environments Where People and Dreams Flourish, published by Bethany House. You can learn more about his book at this webpage, specifically created for Influence Podcast listeners.