Think EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER instead of the token ‘BEGIN-a-MEETING-with-a-PRAYER-so-we-can-get-on-with-the-real-work   I have two mental pictures in my mind.  The first is a boardroom in a large church with comfy office chairs, a whiteboard, and people wearing business casual clothes.  There’s a sizable agenda for the day, lots of work to get done, so the pastor (aka…

You know those times in life when you come face to face with something that is so different than the way you think or are, but the proof of what you’re seeing is so compelling that you’re forced to rethink, at least in some way, your previous assumption?  We’ve all been there, that’s generally how…

Back in the day when I first started out as a youth pastor I had a mom come up to me and thank me for being an ‘actual man.’  Yep, didn’t exactly know how to take that, but I think it was a compliment.  Apparently the year before, her son, who was an athlete and…