leadership
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True Intimacy Is My Desire : My Sabbatical Longing
This is my heart’s desire, what I long for in my sabbatical and beyond… And for each of my church family… to truly know Jesus intimately. Lyrics below YouTube clip… “True Intimacy” Whatever I hold There’s nothing compares To having You close True intimacy is my desire To catch Your whispers To carry Your fire…
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Three Pastors Tell All
Pastors were asked, “What’s your best piece of advice for someone who wants to become a pastor?” One answered… If you can do anything else, do it! The pay ain’t great, criticism is over the top, and in this age when everybody just downloads podcasts of their favourite preacher, you don’t stand a chance. However,…
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Taking Time to Rest with God | My Sabbatical Journey
My sabbatical journey – Philip Gunther I just returned to my post as senior pastor at Parliament (MB) Community Church, Regina, after a seven-month sabbatical – my first in 20 years of ministry. As I contemplated taking a sabbatical, I wondered: How should I prepare? What will I experience? What is a sabbatical? Read… Taking…
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Book Read: Seeing Through The Fog
Another story finished! This one is about Ed Dobson, retired pastor now living with Lou Gehrig’s disease. I’ve learned much reading this book. A leader once busy teaching and leading others, now forced to rely on others even to simply button his shirts. Chapter titles include… “When God is Silent, Forgiveness, Worry, Healing, Giving Thanks,…
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Reversing Your Death Spiral
I attended the Global Leadership Summit this year again. Here’s one golden nugget… Reversing the Death Spiral of a Leader – Dr Henry Cloud (From his book: “Boundaries for Leaders“) Leaders don’t blame, they are instead good stewards and take ownership in leading people. A leader needs to be in charge of him or…
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God Didn’t Call Us to Be Successful, He Called Us to Be Faithful
A few years ago, studying the book of Isaiah, I was deeply impacted by the fact that God called Isaiah, not to be successful, but to be faithful. What? Yup. In fact, God warned him that his ministry would have no converts. One could ask, “Why bother?” Our human voices ask ourselves, “What’s the point?”…
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Religious Leaders: You Love Us, You Hate Us
Loving Our Spiritual Leaders: by Henri Nouwen… “Religious leaders, priests, ministers… can be admired and revered but also hated and despised. We expect that our religious leaders will bring us closer to God through their prayers, teaching, and guidance. Therefore, we watch their behavior carefully and listen critically to their words. But precisely because we…
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It’s 3AM… (Thoughts on Rejection)
…and I can’t sleep… today I finally finished Joyce Meyer’s book, ‘Ashes to Beauty’. I kept getting interrupted several times. One of the last chapters I read today had this… “Almost every time God is ready to promote you and bring you to the next level, you will experience an attack of rejection at the…
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We Can’t Force a Person to Grow
Yesterday I meditated on some Henri Nouwen and came away with this… Just as we cannot force a plant to grow but can take away the weeds and stones which prevent its development, so we cannot force anyone to grow, but we can offer the space for such a change can take place. We can…
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More Important Than Fear
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” ~Ambrose Redmoon
Following and Trusting : Encountering God Out of the Box 