Articles for tag: Vulnerability

September 10, 2017

Christian Standard

#hustle vs #grace

By Chuck Dennie Snap a pic of you getting it done and make sure to include #hustle . . . We live in a world where we compare our lives with the highlight reels we see displayed on our social media channels. The latest buzzword #hustle has been elevated to rock-star status. #hustle has even become a platform on which some leaders are standing . . . at least until that platform crumbles. I have been that leader. I am an ENTJ with a top strength of competition on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality inventory. ENTJ + competition = hustle. I

October 27, 2016

Michael C. Mack

The Pastor”™s Wife: 7 Discoveries She Wishes She Had Understood Sooner

By Michael C. Mack Christine Hoover has been a pastor”™s wife for 14 years and is author of The Church Planting Wife. She says when she and her husband, Kyle, started in ministry, she felt unprepared and afraid. After all, she says, “There is no training ground for ministry life for the pastor”™s wife, there is just the doing it.” If she could go back in time to the beginning of their ministry life together, she says on her blog at www.gracecoversme.com, she”™d tell that young girl these seven things: 1.  Humbly yet boldly accept the opportunity to influence others

January 27, 2016

Christian Standard

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

November 11, 2015

Christian Standard

The Secret-Driven Life

By Jim Tune (This column was first posted November 5, 2014.) To be real is to risk. I know many preachers who feel a deep reluctance (often well-founded) to reveal who they really are to those they lead. Henri Nouwen suggests that pastors are the least confessing people in the church. The expectations demanded of pastors in our Western culture are often unattainable, unsustainable, and soul-withering. I admit that I have sometimes allowed my own fear of vulnerability to push me into hiding. The trouble with life in the shadows is the double life it promotes in the shadow dweller.

October 19, 2015

Christian Standard

What Does Restoration Look Like?

An interview with John Walker By Alan Ahlgrim What would you like a struggling leader to know? First of all, they need to know they”re not alone. Everyone has struggled, is struggling, or will struggle with a life-limiting or ministry-threatening issue. Everyone. Sadly, too many not only struggle, but fail to the point of falling out. Is there a pattern to the failure situations you”ve seen in ministry? Not really, except to say that to some degree, sooner or later everyone messes up or gets stuck. We”re not about blame, shame, or punishment. We”re concerned about restoration and healing. That”s

July 30, 2015

Christian Standard

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 several 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 6, 2011

Christian Standard

Admit Your Need

By Jessica Vana I attended college at an aeronautical university, which means I spent time brushing shoulders with a unique breed. Literally, I went to school with NASA interns and rocket scientists. My alma mater has one of the highest percentages of international students in the nation. Despite my colleagues” bright minds and tremendously diverse backgrounds, however, I began to notice a theme of need. A school like mine has an atypical amount of club involvement because, well, it wasn”t exactly the Greek system crowd. My club of choice, after being invited personally and repeatedly by two jaunty and entertaining

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