Jack Schaap, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, will be sentenced today after pleading guilty to having sex with an underage girl. This entire situation is horrible: a powerful pastor taking advantage of a girl from his congregation. We need to be praying for the victim, the families involved, and for the church. While it is easy to say “that would never happen to me” the truth is that no pastor wakes up one morning having decided to blow up his family, his church, and do something that will land him in jail. Falls like Schaaps, and the other highly public failures of the...

Controversial Christian speaker Rob Bell, formerly of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is probably best known for asking questions… without answering them. Whether it be his position on hell, or other theological positions, Bell rarely makes a definitive statement, preferring to answer questions with a question, which tends to anger people… until now. At a recent event in San Francisco, Bell was asked about his position on marriage, to which he responded: “I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man...

Do you ask for feedback? Seriously, think about this one. Do you ask people for honest feedback on your leadership… on your preaching? Many times in the church world, we tend to look at a lack of feedback, whether positive or negative, as a good thing… the truth is that a total lack of feedback is the most alarming response you can get. Seth Godin writes: “We armor ourselves against the cutting remark, the ad hominem attack, the person who just doesn’t like our stuff. But all of this is the feedback we get when we touch a nerve and are doing work that matters enough to care...

Help us out here. On a recent episode of the 700 Club Pat Robertson received a word of knowledge about a viewer that would be receiving a check for $1 million. A few days later, Robertson shared that a business man told him that BP had written him a check for $1 million. The check was related to the Gulf oil spill, and he had not been expecting it. When you hear about things like this, how do you feel? Is this a miraculous event, or something a little less than that? Is Pat Robertson doing God’s work in sharing a “word of knowledge” or is he giving those trying to discredit our faith...

A new app for your smartphone promises big things! Couch Cachet promises the ability to “finally be who I want you to think I am.” According to the website: “Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app that showed you all of the cool parties, bars and restaurants that you could be hitting tonight? Of course it would. But you know what would be even better? A social application that will lie and say you are already doing those things while you sit at home in your pajamas.” So what do you think? Interested? In this episode of Ministry Briefing we discuss the app: whether it...

There’s really nothing else out there like Ministry Briefing. (Of course every author thinks his book is the best thing since sliced bread). But many of you who have followed my blog here for the past 10 years (believe it or not) know that I love the church… and I love the people who serve in the church. I love the church’s quirkiness. I love the church’s diversity. And I really get charged up when I see stories about how the church is being effective. That’s why I blog… to encourage, to inform, and yes… at times to entertain. I find the church fascinating....

Serving in ministry, we work with all different kinds of people. Some are positive, some aren’t… While we would all love to work with people who give us warm fuzzies, and are always positive, sometimes that just doesn’t happen. Fortunately, we found an article on Life Hacker about how to deal with negative people, so today we talk about dealing with negative people, while maintaining our sanity. How do YOU handle negative...

Mark Morford writes: Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Question:  How do you reach someone with the Gospel that believes in unicorns or that cloud computing involves actual...

Google instantly confused and irritated (and profusely angered) millions of people yesterday. It announced that it is shutting down Google Reader. I did not see this coming. I love Google Reader.  I use it to aggregate all the feeds that I use to find great stuff for this blog, and for Ministry Briefing. How could they do this? Why could they do this? And I was not alone.  Do a search on Twitter, and you’ll see the rampage that people went on. It was not pretty. People are PLEADING with Google not to do this. Please don’t take away something we use and love. Why did Google do...

It hasn’t been all that long ago that there were no cell phones. In high school, we had one pay phone.  And that one phone didn’t work half the time. I remember waiting in line to put in my dime to call my mom to pick me up… many times. I remember at my first job, we had a cellular phone (kind of) in our company vehicle.  It was like a CB, and you shared the  ’line’ with other businesses (so everyone could hear what you were saying).  When it worked. And I remember my first real cell phone.  Yeah… try sticking THAT in your pocket. So I was a little amused by...