Leadership Archives - Newbreed Training

What’s So Bad About the Church at Ephesus?

Having come to maturity in an age when everyone knew we were living in the “age of Laodicea,” I’ve always had problems with Jesus’ letter to the church leader in Ephesus. Raging with joy at works of the Spirit during the Jesus Revolution, it was a little too easy to condemn all those “lukewarm” churches…

The F-word: From Aspirational to Actual

“Language shapes culture. The F-word can be as much ‘aspirational’ as it is descriptive of a present reality.” Jim Love commenting on the blog, “When NOT to Use the F-Word.” Jim is right. Language shapes culture. The F word is often aspirational. However, aspiration without action leads nowhere. Along with language, we need exemplary behaviors…

Words Have Meaning

Well, “Duh,” you say. But not just meaning(s) but meaning. Vocabulary changes so much about what we allow or don’t. What we encourage. Who becomes a hero in our church family. How we embrace or reject opportunity. Consider This We were 13 years into a church planting operation when Carl George entered our lives. We’d…

Accommodating New Realities

a pastoral change and post-COVID fatigue bumped them out of that church. These are some of the “religious dones” we read about. They are done with the Sunday event but active in ministry and hungry for fellowship. The couple in question lead an extremely informal Gen-Z microchurch. Their former pastor decided“You should keep your tithe;…

Recruiting Is a Team Sport

Yesterday as I awaited a flight, another passenger’s t-shirt caught my attention. The slogan probably defined the company where he worked. It read, “Recruiting is a team sport.” Those few words described one of the pillars of the last two churches I pastored. Why the last two and not the first? Because I’m a slow…

Doing What You Though You Couldn’t

It’s cold in the California desert. A warm winter shirt served me well on my morning walk. Along the way, I bumped into an old friend—actually, it was a tree. It’s a plumeria tree typically found in the tropics. I’d seen it before, but it was a welcome surprise today. There are just…

Upending Your Operating System

You should read last week’s blog. It’s called “Why I Quit Pastoring in Hawaii.” An angry friend emailed, describing the article as “rude, hateful, arrogant, harsh, prideful & verges on stupidity.” I wouldn’t have thought that but to each his own. My deeper opinion might be even more upsetting if the blog was all my…

Security Guard, Hoarder or Equipper?

Would you consider yourself a security guard, a hoarder or an equipper? You can describe most church leaders in one of these terms. We each feel the call to shepherd the flock God assigned us, but we do that in unique ways. Much depends on our spiritual gifts, our community and even the availability of…

Why We Should All Celebrate the Juneteenth Holiday

Juneteenth celebrations began in churches and rightly so. The holiday began one year after the Emancipation Proclamation reached Texas. The Confederate army had surrendered months earlier but it was on June 19, 1865 that Union General Robert Granger read the liberating document in the streets of Texas. A year later the commemoration began. Jesus came…

Stand Firm, Anyway!

We can live with hope in a despair-friendly world. A combative approach to a broken culture can do no good. Having rejected the gospel, our culture basks in uncertainty and polarity. God calls us to meet a broken world in love and truth. We must meet our world with faith, love and optimism. But what…