Discover Why Small Groups Often Fall Short of Meeting Expectations I’ve been in small groups, I’ve led small groups, and I’ve overseen a church’s small group ministry. Small groups have the potential to connect people, helping them on their faith journey and better navigate life. Yet small group failure seems a more common outcome. Don’t […]
Navigating Big Our son and daughter-in-law’s Sunday plans change abruptly one Sunday morning. We scramble to find a church to visit. Not just any church—that would be easy—but a church fitting our search criteria. However, we’ve not yet given it much thought. With little time to plan and most services already in progress, we need […]
Discover What the Bible Teaches About Meeting Together While considering a better New Testament approach to church, we talked about the three key perspectives that Jesus changed: meeting in homes, serving as priests, and helping those in need. Then we looked at ten more New Testament practices: relying on the Holy Spirit, worship, prayer, fasting, […]
The Bible Tells Us to Not Give Up Meeting Together, but We Often Miss the Point As we persevere in our faith, one aspect of this is to not give up meeting together (Hebrews 10:25). Many people interpret this verse as a command to attend church. It isn’t. Not really. While meeting together could include […]
Aligning with Like-Minded Peers Can Propel You Forward on Your Christian Walk A mastermind group is a peer-to-peer mentoring alliance where members work together to help one another solve problems, overcome roadblocks, and move forward. I’m part of two author mastermind groups. In them we encourage and support each other as writers, propelling us forward […]
Discussing Church 7 I suspect this church is only a couple years old. I later learn they’re an outgrowth of a small group. Consider these four discussion questions about Church #7: 1. Their meeting space looks abandoned. We approach with uncertainty. I hesitate to walk inside. It wouldn’t take much to make the entrance more […]
Visiting Church One Time Isn’t Enough With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #51. This mega church does so many things right. Though I don’t want to go to a large church, this one really draws me. Of […]
Author Peter DeHaan Talks about His Most Popular Book Peter DeHaan answers questions about his book, Women of the Bible. Question 1: Why did you write this book? Answer: Throughout my life I’ve sat through thousands of sermons and most all of them talked about the men in the Bible. They ignored women or gave […]
Focusing on Ourselves Is Selfish While Focusing on Others Is Selfless There was a time when I headed up our church’s small group initiative. One of the things I learned was that small groups with an inward focus lasted about eighteen months and fizzled out. However, groups with an outward focus would last much longer. […]
We Live in a World That Thinks Bigger Is Better, but That’s Not Always True Our modern-day society evaluates things based on size. We celebrate magnitude, with bigger being better. Consider the opposite. For example, do you want to shrink your church? Of course not. You want to grow it. We often assume that bigger […]