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Fear #3 – Fear of Success: This last fear may sound strange at first, but I’ve seen it spring up in my coaching clients more and more. We deeply fear our own success. And many times it’s the highly successful people that fear greater success the most. Here’s why. Success is a type of magnifying glass. The spotlight shines brighter when you’re on the platform. Most of us know our flaws and we fear exposure of those weaknesses. We do ...

I started “The Assembling of the Church” six years ago today – March 21, 2006. So, today is my sixth blogiversary. The blog started on blogger, but I switched to a self-hosted WordPress-based blog a few years ago. (That’s why you may occasionally find links to assembling.blogspot.com, but those links should direct you back here.) Even though I started blogging with two posts on the same day...

In yesterday’s post, I explained that I’m working my way through a short series on the topic of perseverance. But, I’m dealing with some different issues related to perseverance and the church, perhaps some topics that we don’t often deal with. For example, yesterday’s post dealt with persevering through temptation. In today’s post, I’m looking at the flip-side of temptati...

“A plan in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out.” Proverbs 20:5 The writer of that Proverb reminds us of the importance of having knowledge in regard to moving one’s plans out of the deep recesses of the heart to the surface to where those plans can be carried out. Generally, the first step in seeing those plans carried out involves some level of vision casting. A lot of people have great vision. But ...

Fear #2 – Fear of Failure: In my travels of Igniting Souls I met a man at one of my events, who regretfully told me a story from 30 years prior. Evidently back in high school he sat in class one day with a blank notebook in front of him. The teacher asked him to work out a math problem at the chalkboard. He stood in the front of the class for all of 3 minutes. When he returned to his desk he looked at his notebook someone had written the na...

Josh at “Called to Rebuild” has written an excellent post called “The thing we evangelicals can’t stand about Jesus.” Oh, I know what you’re thinking: “Evangelicals love Jesus!” Yes, of course. All of Jesus’ followers love him. But, sometimes, when you’re reading through Scripture, don’t you wish he did something or said something a little different...

One of my favorite statues is in downtown Boston, in Quincy Market. Towering above the crowd on a pillar is a life-sized Sam Adams statue. Engraved on it is this inscription: Fearless and Incorruptible. Now whatever you think of the early American Revolutionary you have got to admit that Adams was, from the perspective of his cause, fearless and incorruptible. Likewise there are many great reformers in the Bible who fit into such a mold. One of...

A few months ago, I wrote a series about some of the lessons that I’ve learned trail running. But, I want to talk about something else that I’m learning as a result of running: perseverance. You see, even though I love to run, that does not mean that I love to run every week, or every day, or every step. Sometimes, I have to make myself run even though I don’t want to. That’s perseverance. ...

I’ve admitted for a long time that I think “I Stink At Prayer.” While my confession had more to do with my personal prayer life I never thought about the impact of my public prayer life. Gordan MacDonald recently shared some challenging words when it comes to our public prayers, pleading for us to be more thoughtful and intentional with them. Here’s what he recently had to say in Leadership Journal… Can I be frank? I...

Fear #1 – Fear of Change: We think change is icky because we’re creatures of habit. As children we need to change just to survive. If we rejected change we’d still be in diapers drinking out of baby bottles and wearing bibs. But as adults we grow out of change fairly quickly. We prefer what we know because it’s safer. We stop playing to win and instead we start playing not to lose. We ignore Eric Hoffer’s warning. “People will...