What started out as a podcast planned around this title: “How Can a Pastor or Leader Flourish around Christmas?” evolved into a very different podcast about the leadership mistakes I made around Christmas. I allowed the pressure of the wider church culture, my own unresolved shadow issues, and my low-level of differentiation to make decisions that were not God’s best. In this podcast, I share the five major mistakes I made. Sadly, it actually took me nineteen years to implement significant changes! The following are 5 leadership mistakes that I hope and pray you can avoid around Christmas so that your life and leadership might BE the message of Christmas: 1. I failed to put first things first.  I did not steward myself or my family well. 2. I wasted time trying to live someone else’s life and ministry. I grew anxious as other churches thrived and flourished in their large Christmas events. 3. I engaged in. Read more.

 We pray you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! Before we introduce this week’s podcast, we want to remind you that today is Giving Tuesday. At EHD, we are seeking to raise $10K to fund the translation of our resources into Spanish to reach the 477 million Spanish-speakers worldwide. With your help, we can multiply deeply changed disciples all around the world! Give Now   At the end of my 21st year at New Life Fellowship Church as Lead Pastor, our staff did a half-day exercise around the turning point lessons we had learned over those years. (A number of us in the room had been there since the beginning.). Over the next several weeks, I refined those lessons and, with the help of our elder board, edited them down into “10 Hard Lessons.” In this podcast, I expand on numbers six through ten of “10 Hard Lessons” I learned in my first 21 years of. Read more.

10 Hard Lessons from Decades of Failures and Mistakes: Part 1 Listen Now: Podcast At the end of my 21st year at New Life Fellowship Church as Lead Pastor, our staff did a half-day exercise around the turning point lessons we had learned over those years. (A number of us in the room had been there since the beginning.). Over the next several weeks, I refined those lessons and, with the help of our elder board, edited them down into “10 Hard Lessons.” In this podcast, I expand on five of those lessons birthed out of difficult labor, costly mistakes, and painful suffering. My hope was that future generations at New Life would prayerfully re-read before God and not repeat our mistakes. When I unexpectedly found this document buried in my files, I was amazed at the timelessness of these hard lessons. My hope is that you will be reflective before God around your. Read more.

This podcast invites you into a lesson God brought into my life that shifted my view of myself and my leadership. I was struggling to lead New Life into her next phase. I had founded the church 18/19 years earlier and was at a personal crossroads. I struggled with self-doubt and pessimism around my abilities and wondered if I had the inner resources needed to take our church forward. Perhaps, I had given New Life all I had to give and it was time for someone new to be the senior leader. Then God met me powerfully through the story of David in 1 Samuel 17. Unlike the army of Israel that was filled with great fear, he stepped over the counsel of Saul and his older siblings who said, “You are incapable and will fail.” And he attacked Goliath, leading God’s people into a new future. How did he do it? He remembered. Read more.

I approached the podcast this week as if we were sitting across the table from one another and you asked the question, “Well Pete, how do you measure success in your own leadership and how might that be different from the way I’m measuring it today?” Here are the nine points I share as a response to that very important question: Success is Remaining in communion with Jesus throughout each day. Success is Embracing the Season God has me in – be it Fall, Winter, Spring or Summer. Success is Resisting Temptations of the Evil One, i.e. demonic powers. “This is the great work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God and to expect temptation till the last breath.” Anthony the Great Success is Trusting Jesus.  Our work is to “be trusting in (i.e. relaxing in) the One he has sent” (John 6:29). Success is Living as a Sign. Read more.

When we step back to see the global, cross-racial, international, historical church as God sees, it is powerfully transformative. God has raised up one church spanning continents, cultures, ethnic groups, and languages. And while we were born into that church in a particular country, in a particular time in history, and in a particular church tradition or stream, the larger church is incredibly diverse with a long, rich history. In this podcast, I expound on why it is so essential to learn from Christians different than us, as well as from history if we are going to make serious disciples of Jesus. After giving a brief overview of church history, I share the ten treasures for mission from Scott Sunquist. Scott, a friend of mine for the past 36 years, has a PhD in Asian Church history and missiology. After teaching World Christianity in Singapore, Pittsburgh and Fuller, he is now President at Gordon-Conwell. Read more.