“Just as the spirit of God was with Christ on the cross, so he is with us in the depths of our agonies, reminding us that there is something ahead of us," Ken Costa says. Our discussion focuses on the things we may have overlooked about the cross.

“Unbelievers need to see that we care for them, not just their postmortem souls but all of who they are as fallen image-bearers of God.”

While meetings can be an useful tool to push the mission of your church forward, sloppy meetings can be a total waste of time for your team and for the church as a whole. Some common problems that I’ve seen creep into churches with too many unfocused meetings are that:

The kids loved their lion stress balls and it was a great time to talk to them about not worrying about the consequences. We need to do what is right all the time and let God handle the rest.

Small group leadership is an art. Leading well means sometimes what a leader does when the team’s back is turned is more important than what they do in the team’s presence.

Consider this, what if you were to pray for your wife more, encourage your wife more, and do some grocery shopping? From here on out, my goal is to do what the awesome husband does.

Open Doors has released a study evaluating the similarities and differences in how Christian men and women are persecuted. The researchers have found that global Christian suffering is gender specific and that, overall, women experience a greater degree and complexity of persecution than men do.

There is an old word that describes going to war and killing sin. Mortify it. When you see that word, it means, kill zone. DEFCON 1. Going nuclear. Annihilation. Is this the posture of your heart toward your sin?