Blog Posts

When Bad is Better

Pastor Tommy Nelson talked about Allie Miller, a businessman in his church who established the church’s tape library. He was about sixty years old when he died of prostate cancer. Before he died, Allie told Nelson that the greatest thing that ever happened to him—other than knowing Jesus Christ—was cancer. 

Allie came to know the Lord when he was a little boy, but he said, “I used Him as my Savior.”  He said, “When you have a death pronouncement given to you, you don’t have to take it by faith that you’re going to die. Now all that stuff you’ve been saying all those years about laying up your treasures takes on real meaning.”

Trials have a very beneficial purpose. Trials purify you. Trials make you trust. Trials make everything you hear in Sunday School become real.

In chapter 7 of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says that hard times are not always the worst thing.  That’s when bad is better.

Our culture is similar to Solomon’s.  Most people go through life looking to have a good time.

Click here for more from Pastor Tommy Nelson on Ecclesiastes 7

10 Keys to Servant Leadership

When our church celebrates graduating high school seniors, one tradition we have is for members to highlight their favorite verses and put notes of encouragement in Bibles presented to the students by our pastor.

I always highlight my life verse—Philippians 2:3 (pictured above)—and encourage students to serve others. That’s also my tagline for this blog: “Serving leaders who shoot for the stars.”  Servant Leadership is core to my personal philosophy.

Calvin Miller wrote The Empowered Leader: 10 Keys to Servant Leadership with three objectives.  Here’s how he described them:

  1. I want the wisdom of Scripture to speak a clear and usable word to every contemporary Christian leader.
  2. I want those sound leadership themes that dominate current thinking to be linked with scriptural insight.
  3. I hope to define Christian leadership in such a way that it escapes the haphazard reputation it often acquires.

The whole of biblical and Christian history is a cumulative account of God’s call to leadership.

Every Christian who desires to become a leader must first know how to follow.

Matthew 20:27 says, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be a servant.”  A contemporary spin is Zig Ziglar’s belief that you can best achieve what you want in life if you are servant enough to help others achieve what they want in life.

Click here for a summary of Calvin Miller’s The Empowered Leader