The fifth core spiritual habit shifts the focus from ourselves and the church, and puts it where it ultimately belongs – on others. Jesus’ last commandment was to make disciples and to be a witness to what we’ve experienced in Jesus Christ (as opposed to what we’ve experience in the “church”). In general, the church [...]

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With the fourth core spiritual habit, we’ve reached a significant shift. Up until now the spiritual habits have focused either on our relationship with God or our relationship with the church. In other words, the first three core spiritual habits are inward focused. The fourth habit, though, takes Jesus’ command to love our neighbors seriously. [...]

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I’m a big advocate of one-anothering, perhaps because it was practiced so effectively in the early church. One-anothering is how Christians are called (and expected) to treat each another – at least from a New Testament perspective. In the Gospels, Jesus gave us five love directives: (1) Love God; (2) love our neighbors; (3) love [...]

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Those who read my previous post may have been surprised that I suggested scripture reading may be the most transformative spiritual habit. I’m sure there are those who would argue that prayer offers more opportunities for the Spirit’s injection into our lives. However, so long as the average prayer is a monologue, it’s unlikely to [...]

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The first, and typically most transformative spiritual habit, is surprisingly scripture reading. I’m fond of saying “I’m a scientist’s son and a Mainliner at heart,” so when I tell church leaders that if they’ll just start reading scripture regularly their lives will be transformed, they sometimes look at me as if I was from a [...]

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Although my book High-Voltage Spirituality is a compendium of forty-eight different spiritual habits (disciplines), in practice I maintain there are five core spiritual habits that provide a foundation for personal maturity and church growth. And so it was with a mix of horror and relief when I was informed my book High-Voltage Spirituality was going [...]

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From the beginning of 21st Century Strategies, a long, long time ago, we’ve had one driving value: help transform churches. We suspect that pretty much all our readers understand that one of the ways we do that is by offering professional consultation services, church leadership coaching, and congregational training. What many folks may not realize [...]

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I wrote this entry the other day and I think I posted it … but in the great server switchover, it appears to have been misplaced. So, just in case, here it is again. I had a conversation with some pastors about one of the seminars they had attended. They had gone looking and hoping [...]

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Maybe it’s the circles I’m hanging with lately, but suddenly there’s a jump in the interest on house church. Bill Easum’s article in On Track (the 21st Century Strategies monthly E-zine) reviewed Frank Viola’s Reimagining the Church because of “the importance of the book.” And I agree, it’s an important book, just as Viola’s Pagan [...]

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George Barna recently came out with a poll reporting that the majority of Christians don’t believe in either Satan or the Holy Spirit. Since then, I have received a small mountain of emails with Christian leaders crying “Where did the church go wrong?” I suppose these questions probably deserve and answer, but I’m not going [...]

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