character – Page 6 – 300 words a day

Five years, five years later.

(I first published this over five years ago, on June 24, 2010. Did any of you take my advice then? What if we started now?) “What do you want to be true of you as a leader in five years? What do you want your wife to say about you as a church leader? What […]

by Jon Swanson

Not the expected journey.

First published November 17, 2011 I love stories about people praying and then having answers. It’s exciting. I mean, look at this story. Paul writes a letter to some people in Rome. He talks about his travel schedule and his desire to visit them. And he asks them to pray for him. Pray that I may be […]

by Jon Swanson

Spiritual training: models and pieces

We’re looking at spiritual training this week. We’ll look at questions two and three today. 2. What does maturity look like? When training, it helps to have models of what you want to look like, examples that you want to follow. In spiritual training, one model is almost always Jesus. (I want to be as […]

by Paul Merrill

The power of confrontation

A friend called me to account. My attitudes were hurting them enough that they even said our friendship was in jeopardy. I had no idea that my attitudes and words had been so offensive. I am so glad they told me! We must not be afraid to confront the people in our lives. It took […]

by Jon Swanson

Making our own noise

We have one of our church services in a gym. The gym has a cooling system designed more for basketball than for quiet meditation. We used to program the fans to stop during the sermon. This is great for sound, but it means that we have to make it cold during the first half of […]