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Tag Archives: The EHS Course

My Top 10 Books: Spring/Summer 2015

Geri complained this past week that I had books all around the house – from the living room to the bedroom to the car – reading three to four books at a time. That has been my rhythm for years. If you are like me, you look for a variety of material to peruse during the summer. The following are a few recommendations: 1. The Gospel of John by Frederick Dale Bruner I have been studying and reading John’s gospel for the last 9 months as part of my morning time with God. As part of that process, I prayerfully read this wonderful commentary. Bruner is one of the best commentators I know, combining both great scholarship and devotional passion that leads me to Jesus. I also recommend his 2 volume commentary on Matthew as a must resource in every pastor’s library before preaching on any passage from the synoptic gospels.   2. The Art. Read more.

Go Slowly. Study Deeply. The EH Leader Study Guide.

I wrote The Emotionally Healthy Leader slowly – very slowly. Like good wine, it aged over an eight-year period. During that time I carefully chronicled my mistakes, my struggles, my successes, and my new learnings of applying EHS to the building of a growing church, organization, and team. After twenty years of leading at New Life, I grew tired of relying on unmodified business practices to navigate key leadership tasks. I discovered that simply grafting secular branches into our spiritual root system often caused us to bear the wrong kind of fruit. The Emotionally Healthy Leader breaks new ground in practically applying a deep inner life with Jesus to key leadership tasks as planning, team building, boundaries, endings, and new beginnings. It offers the opportunity to revolutionize the way we lead others. To actually make such a paradigm shift, however, requires we create space to wrestle with the content. For this reason, I dedicated. Read more.

2015 EH Leadership Conference Video Downloads

The 2015 Emotionally Healthy Leadership Conference was attended by over 350 church leaders from around the world and thousands others joined online to experience this dynamic 2-day leadership event. For the next 48 hours, The 2015 EH Leadership Conference is available on digital download for $25. That’s 75% off the regular $100 price. We invite you and your team to experience the leadership conference again or for the first time! The 2015 EHL Conference download pack includes 7 video sessions covering core leadership themes based on the soon to be released The Emotionally Healthy Leader including: Planning and Decision making Culture and Team Building Power and Wise Boundaries Endings and New Beginnings You will hear how our leadership is directly informed and connected to our inner life with Christ. Also included are the complete 26-page conference participants notes to help guide you through each session. What you do matters.  Who you are matters more.

Waiting on God for God

One of the turning points in my leadership happened 12 years ago while spending a week praying the Offices at a Trappist monastery. My prayer life had been marked by waiting on God FOR “THINGS” –e.g. leaders for specific ministries, creative strategies, breakthroughs, key donors to support the work, healings, growth in our church, family blessings, etc. At that point I moved to waiting on God FOR GOD. It turned out to be life-changing – both for my relationship with Jesus and my leadership. While praying for those “things” is good and biblical, I realized that my will was inseparably mixed with God’s will. The lines between the two were blurry. I always seemed to need something else from him. During that week with the Trappists, I sensed from God an invitation to seek his face (Ps. 27:4) and wait for Him alone. Out of that, I trusted, He would reveal himself and his. Read more.

Looking for God in Our Limits

Our limits are often the last place we look for God. But when we fail to look for God in our limits, we simply bypass Him. In the last three weeks, God has limited me through a bicycle accident that required surgery (breaking my right wrist and dislocating my left elbow) and through personal identity theft (where my banking, credit cards, and online accounts were all compromised). These limits have revealed to me, once again, the condition of my own heart and the challenge it is for me to surrender in trust to Him. O how easy it is to rebel against God right in the midst of my work for Him! I have been reminded of Robert Barron’s insight that the heart of original sin in the Garden of Eden was their refusal to accept God’s limits and not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:15-17). John. Read more.

Just Relax

Anxious. Frustrated. Annoyed. Angry. Resentful. These are emotional states that describe our leadership more often than we care to admit. Relaxed is not an adjective I hear often to describe us as Christian leaders. Consider this important case study of Moses. Moses worked and waited for almost forty years to enter the Promised Land. Having started with 603,550 men to manage — not to mention all the women and children — Moses’ and Aaron’s patience was repeatedly tested to the limit by a seemingly endless barrage of complaints. When the people cry about their lack of food and water and accuse Moses of bringing them out into the desert to die, Moses is livid. At this point, he is also exhausted and has little capacity to manage his anger and resentment. Imagine the scene as he loses his cool: The LORD said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather. Read more.