Catalyst Articles

As I sat in silence with these creatures, I had a God-thought pop into my mind that simply said, “You do this sometimes, too.”

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Marketing has changed in the last 10-15 years. Used to, if you had a good ad campaign, eye catching design and a well-written tagline, people would notice and take action. Not necessarily anymore. In today’s economy, your best marketing tool is a great product.

Feelings of pressure, adrenaline, failure, joy, conflict, and paralyzing fear seem to all bounce in me on any given day. Because, here is the thing about leading something.... you will be loved and hated.

We’d be foolish to think we are invulnerable. But we’d be just as foolish to think that evil wins the day.

Ministry can be a very lonely place if you are not surrounded by authentic people. It’s very important for you to know and be known.

People today do not long for a return from Baby­lonian exile. We are not under Roman occupation. What is the contemporary relevance of Jesus’s message of liberation?

When I told my friends and family that God called me to do this, they all had the same reaction. “But you don’t know how to grow anything,” and that was true, I’d never grown anything successfully in my life. Someone once told me, “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called,” and I clung to that.

Over the years, I’ve established my own system that seems to work for me. Thought I would share it. Let me admit - I don’t necessarily recommend the system I’ve instituted for myself. I would recommend implementing a system the experts recommend, and ultimately just some kind of system, whatever it looks like.

I’ve found that the best way to make sure your relationships bless—instead of curse—your legacy is to filter them through three specific lenses: ownership, magnification, and community.

Somehow our conversation kept looping back around to what she felt was her calling in ministry, and I realized it wasn’t really an issue of people not knowing her, but rather people not knowing of her. In her mind, being known meant that others knew her name and her platform, not her sin patterns and her heartaches.

A couple of months ago, we canceled our DISH Network subscription and are now just paying $8 a month to watch movies and TV shows on Netflix. I know of several friends that have done the same thing and are just using services like Netflix and HuluPlus and canceling subscriptions to cable and satellite. I want to share some lessons I’ve learned from the company of Netflix and two shows that I watch on Netflix.