The Beauty Doctor and Gospel Centered Parenting

My family currently has health insurance through a local Michigan company that operates its own Family Medicine centers. Basically it means that we all (me, my wife, and my two youngins) go to the same place for all of our medical needs. We’ve been with them for over two years and there are a number of things I like about the family-practice model, some things that I don’t but that’s not what this post is about.

Our doctor’s office building is home to a number of different facilities for various medical services, for the most part, it is a one-stop-shop for basic medical needs. In our two years with them, we’ve really only spent time in four areas of the center (listed in order of amount of time spent, greatest to least): the doctor’s offices (including the waiting area), the pharmacy, the play area , and radiology (for various, pregnancy-related...

What Is Your Person Strategy?

The backlash is in full swing. It was inevitable given the rapid proliferation of social media over the past year.

Despite the integrity and good intentions of most people who use tools like Twitter, the low cost of usage and anonymity offered inevitably result in these systems being abused by people of questionable ethical standards. These people have no qualms about abandoning etiquette, stretching the truth, and attempting to manipulate the people the people that social media these tools allow them to access. All for personal gain. And because this behavior has a negative impact on those whose intentions are more noble, the “good guys” have started speaking out.

The dissent started out in the form of people publicly questioning the qualifications of self-proclaimed and...

Kingdom Excellence Is The Power Of Always Trying Again

As I learn more and more about excellence through my church research and ministry research, one question that keeps coming up is “What is the relationship between excellence and perfection?”

I believe that  kingdom excellence is not contingent on achieving perfection; however, perfection does play a significant role in excellence. You can be excellence without being perfect.

What I’ve come to realize is that the kingdom perspective of perfection is that although perfection can never be attained by our human...

Business as Mission Adresses the Big Issues Facing the Church

In Tim Keller’s latest blog post, he points out five big issues facing the Western Church. They are:

I recommend you head over to the Redeemer City to City website and read what Keller has to say about these issues. It helps to focus on these shifts in the evangelistic landscape of the West. Doing so will help us to anticipate new opportunities and threats to our efforts to achieving our goals as Kingdom strategists.

One thing I am encouraged by as I read these is that in many ways the...

Book Review | Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller

“Most people spend their lives trying to make their heart’s fondest dreams come true… We never imagine that getting our heart’s deepest desires might be the worst thing that can ever happen to us.” –Timothy Keller

Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller

I have a fondness for Tim Keller primarily because he was the first preacher that I ever heard preach the Gospel. Granted, that is an exaggeration. What I really mean is Tim Keller was preaching when Jesus Christ opened my eyes, ears, and heart to the truth of the Gospel. My wife (girlfriend at the time) had started attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan because she was familiar with...

Clarifying Business as Mission Objectives

The following is another excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Whereas evangelism, profit, and (to a lesser extent) mission to the developing world were the historic points of...

Who are the Business as Mission leaders? (part 3)

The following is another excerpt from the BAM Survey 2007 Report. The BAM Survey 2007 Report is an in-depth assessment of the state of the Business as Mission movement based on survey responses from 497 people in 38 countries. You can purchase an electronic copy of the BAM Survey 2007 Report for $14.99 here.

Business as Ministry

It is clear from the survey results that the belief that missions/ministry work can be done in the business context is widely accepted (Exhibit 4). In fact, as many survey respondents believe that Business as Mission is beneficial to the kingdom as...

Strategy Principles – Simplicity

In order to be effective, good strategy must be simple.

Simple to understand.

Simple to communicate.

Simple to execute.

As strategists, our job is to achieve simplicity while not sacrificing the quality in our content or purpose. We are the ones who lead people to the simplicity that exists on the far side of complexity.

Today’s Management Tip of the Day from the Harvard Business Review presents three C’s to help you and your organization eliminate complexity and achieve simplicity:

Collaboration. Silos are the enemy of simplicity. Work across the organization to identify where the complexity is and together improve the way business is done. Coordination. Smooth coordination is critical to finding simple solutions to the problems you’re trying to solve. Communication. Once you’ve gotten rid...

Can Missions Organizations Be Excellent in Today’s Environment?

Yesterday, I received an email from leader in the mission field with some feedback about the value of trying to define a standard of excellence for ministries’ online activities. What he described was a reluctance among mission (and probably all non-profit) organizations to embrace standards because doing so would mean committing to doing what it takes to live up to those standards. As he put it:

We have not had much traction in finding groups looking to set more standards that they would then have to adopt/invest effort to measure up to.  It is a particularly challenging time for mission organizations trying to do as much as they can, as well as they can with shrinking resources.