Articles for tag: Spiritual Formation

Helping Women Live Well, Lead Well

By Jennifer Johnson Blessing Ranch (New Port Richey, FL) is well known for its intensive counseling services and spiritual formation work with pastors and their families. Facilitating personal transformation is at the core of what they do, and now with “Beyond Her Story” they”re hoping to multiply that work among women across the country. “Over the last year or two I started feeling like God was leading us to make more efforts to reach women in ministry,” says Dr. Charity Walker-Byers, executive director of clinical services at Blessing Ranch. “We”ve worked with women in leadership here in the United States

October 17, 2016

Culture & Public Square Politics & Government

Faith & Virtue

How and WhyÂ America IsÂ Still Searching By Neal Windham I fear that our ability””maybe even our desire””for dialogue is gone. What does this mean for a people whose first and greatest prayer is, “Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”? I live and dwell and have my being in a nation that”s been in search mode for better than 50 years. Long before Google, in the decade of the Kennedys and Vietnam, of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Greenwich Village and Haight-Ashbury, Americans were engulfed in a search for what it means to be a free

September 26, 2016

Discipleship & Spiritual Formation

The Case for “˜Authentics”

By Neal Windham I recently took six college students to a state park not far from my home for an afternoon of prayer. It was a dreary spring day. Intermittent rain showers soaked our plans, cooled the air, and beckoned us to drier conditions after we toured the park. So we went to a Dairy Queen””you can always pray at a Dairy Queen””where we celebrated Abbey”s birthday over Blizzards and swapped some great stories. On the drive home, students began to sing. One of them asked if I had a request. “Sure,” I said, “How about something from The Sound

July 24, 2016

Discipleship & Spiritual Formation

My Heart”s Full Desire

By Phyllis Fox “It”s like the Rascal Flatts song, “˜Life Is a Highway,”” said Daniel. The “highway” led Daniel Ball from Chatham, England, to Milligan College in Tennessee to play soccer (and for an education). “I had never heard of Milligan College until I received a call from Adam Laney, Milligan”s men”s soccer coach. After arriving at the airport in Tennessee, my first impression was there literally is a church on every corner. I knew East Tennessee was in the South and that the area is called the Bible Belt, but I didn”t know I would be living on the

July 18, 2016

Discipleship & Spiritual Formation

People Like You and Me

By J.K. Jones Eastview Christian Church, Normal, Illinois, is a church marked by continual encounters with Jesus. I hope that doesn”t sound boastful or bombastic. We regularly witness genuine life transformation in people of all walks and stripes. That long and incomplete list includes police officers, public school teachers, insurance employees, strippers, bartenders, drug and alcohol abusers, self-righteous religious folk, gay and lesbian, black and white, rich and poor, male and female, coaches and athletes, children and elderly, and outsiders and insiders. Some are as intentional and seeking as the pearl merchant described in Matthew 13:45, 46. Others are as

March 13, 2016

The Peculiar Duty of Pastoring

By Patrick Mitchell When I entered a conversation with a dear friend that morning at Milligan College”s exercise facility, I never would have thought that within a few months I would be pastor of a 125-year-old church in a town that boasts a population of approximately 1,000. While still chugging along on the elliptical machine, Phyllis asked if I would consider helping fill the pulpit of a rural church in our area while it searched for a pastor. You should know that at that point in my life (I was then 30 years old), I was done with church ministry.

March 7, 2016

I Look to Stay

By Casey Tygrett In 2007, I encountered a book that changed my life. The book was Hannah Coulter, a novel by Wendell Berry. I had previously read a Berry poem called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” With a title like that, how could you forget? In fact, one line stays with me even today: “Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.” Even with that poem in mind, I wasn”t prepared for Hannah Coulter. The characters, the life, the unspoken but ever present faith””Berry”s book drew me in, and I couldn”t put it down. Once

January 27, 2016

Care & Counseling Trauma

No One Recovers Alone

By Jim Tune On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a 37-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke. She sustained rapid debilitation of her brain as she lost the ability to walk, talk, write, or recall any part of her life. It would take her eight years to fully recover. Taylor documents her journey in her book My Stroke of Insight. In a chapter called “What I Needed Most,” she says recovery was a decision she had to make a million times a day. In a sense, we are all in recovery””recovery from dysfunctional families, recovery from abuse, recovery

January 12, 2016

Mark A. Taylor

Worship Worship & Prayer

Should Musicians Plan Our Worship Services?

By Mark A. Taylor Here”s why a church should recruit excellent musicians to lead worship: The people we”re serving as well as those we hope to reach are hearing professionally produced music everywhere they go. Many of them love music, and they listen to “their music” in their car, at the gym, when they walk, and sometimes at work. But even nonmusical people encounter music every day. Music creates the emotion and signals the mood in everything from Star Wars to sitcoms. The most memorable TV and radio ads include music. (I heard an interview the other day with a

December 8, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Worship Worship & Prayer

The Greatest Impact

By Mark A. Taylor How should we worship? Maybe we can take some comfort in the fact that throughout church history, Christians have answered that question in wildly differing ways. As both Paul Blowers and Tom Lawson point out this month, lavish artistic expressions of worship centuries ago eventually gave way to abandonment and even destruction of them by Protestant reformers. The motivation for each approach was the desire to please and praise God. Across Christendom today, we find everything from formal liturgy in classic settings to simple, quiet contemplative gatherings in smaller groups to exuberant, loud, guitar-driven, drum-syncopated megachurch

October 5, 2015

Chasing after Integrity

Integrity is still respected. But is it expected?Â Do we know integrity when we see it? Do we know how to achieve it when we find it lacking in ourselves?Â In a testimony every Christian, and certainly every Christian leader, should read, this seasoned minister describes the steps he takes as he “desperately chases after God.” By Randy Gariss This afternoon my local sports-talk radio host was yelling again. In the midst of his apoplexy he kept shouting, “Where is integrity? Where is integrity? I tell you I am sick of this stuff!” It seems another high-profile, highly touted athlete

September 21, 2015

CCV Growing Boys into Leaders

By Jennifer Johnson For more than 30 years, a group in Australia has led a three-stage program to help teenage boys transition from boyhood to adulthood. Last year Christ”s Church of the Valley (San Dimas, CA) launched the program for its own young men. Leadership USA is designed in one-week stages spread out over three years, with boys starting stage one at age 15 and completing stage three at 17. “THIS IS NOT SUMMER CAMP” the church”s webpage explains; instead, it is an intense and challenging experience designed to help the participants grow spiritually, physically, mentally, and socially. “When I

July 30, 2015

Becky Ahlberg’s Thought Leaders

We asked 35 Christian leaders, “Who is the influencer with the biggest impact on your life and ministry?” Most of these leaders listed severalÂ influential thinkers, writers, innovators, and leaders more of us should get to know. This response is from Becky Ahlberg, executive director of My Safe Harbor, Anaheim, California. ________ This was a difficult assignment. When you”ve been in the ministry for 45 years, you”ve had to do A LOT of thinking! The question also comes at an interesting time in my life when so many of the thought leaders that shaped me and my choices are either gone

July 30, 2015

Mike Baker’s Thought Leaders

We asked 35 Christian leaders, “Who is the influencer with the biggest impact on your life and ministry?” Most of these leaders listed severalÂ influential thinkers, writers, innovators, and leaders more of us should get to know. This response is fromÂ Mike Baker, senior pastor with Eastview Christian Church, Normal, Illinois. ________ Two men have helped me think both as a Christian and a pastor for nearly 25 years. Both Cal Jernigan, senior pastor at Central Christian Church of Mesa, Arizona, and J.K. Jones, pastor of spiritual formation at Eastview Christian Church, Normal, Illinois, have impacted my thinking in great ways. J.K.

July 27, 2015

Book Reviews Reviews

Growth, Grace, and a Writer I Like

By LeRoy Lawson Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership:Â Seeing God in the Crucible of Ministry Ruth Haley Barton Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2008 Lila: A Novel Marilynne Robinson New York: Farrar, Straus,Â and Giroux, 2014 Persuasion: A Novel Jane Austen Originally published in 1817 I”ve written here before about how much I learn from my students. Many books in this column have appeared because they told me I needed to read a favorite of theirs. Ruth Haley Barton is one of those favorites. She is president of the Transforming Center, where she and her colleagues are in the business

July 24, 2015

Michael Plank’s Thought Leaders

We asked 35 Christian leaders, “Who is the influencer with the biggest impact on your life and ministry?” Most of these leaders listed severalÂ influential thinkers, writers, innovators, and leaders more of us should get to know. This response is fromÂ Michael Plank, executive director of worship and discipleship, Spring Road Christian Church, Lanett, Alabama. ________ Dr. Richard Averbeck, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is also the director of the Spiritual Formation Forum. Building on the amazing work of Dallas Willard in the field of discipleship, Averbeck and his forum of scholars in this field

July 17, 2015

Ethan Magness’s Thought Leaders

We asked 35 Christian leaders, “Who is the influencer with the biggest impact on your life and ministry?” Most of these leaders listed severalÂ influential thinkers, writers, innovators, and leaders more of us should get to know. This response is fromÂ Ethan Magness, pastor of spiritual formation with Mountain Christian Church, Joppa, Maryland. ________ I feel like I am learning so much right now in ministry. So many people are participating in fruitful experiments of ministry and biblical study, and I am grateful to get to learn from them. Here are a few who are especially influential to me right now. In

July 16, 2015

Miscellaneous

A Conversation with J.K. Jones

Lookout Editor Kelly Carr speaks with J.K. Jones, who led morning Bible study sessions throughout the 2015 North American Christian Convention. Jones, pastor of spiritual formation at Eastview Christian Church, Normal, Illinois, talks about his love for books and their importance in his spiritual formation. Listen to their conversation.

July 16, 2015