Michael Leahy knows of what he speaks. He was addicted to pornography. On the first page of his introduction of his latest book, Porn @ Work: Exposing the Office’s #1 Addiction (Northfield Publishing, 2009), he notes that “70 percent of all online porn access occurs during the nine-five workday.”
Read More >In the age of social networking, face-to-face connections are more important than ever to America’s churches. One way congregations seek to preserve personal relationships among members is through the creation or maintenance of a photo directory.
Read More >You’ve heard of the 10/40 Window, an area of the world with great poverty and the largest population of non-Christians, extending 10 to 40 degrees from the equator across North Africa to China. But there is another window opening on the world, one that many in the church have grown so accustomed to, we don’t even think of its being there. It’s the 40/50 Window.
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When Mike Klockenbrink’s company transferred him to Northern California, he and his wife began visiting Lakeside Church in Folsom, CA. It was their second visit there that he told his wife that God wants them there for some reason.
Read More >Jeff was the new children’s pastor at a mid-sized church in Florida. He had come well-recommended even though all of his prior experience had been at a smaller church where he wore many hats. Jeff and the senior pastor at the church had developed an instant rapport and he had sailed through his meetings and interviews with the selection committee.
Read More >My wife and I were in church services the other week and the pastor was into a spellbinding message about spiritual warfare. Just at the time when the congregation is doing great missions work, breaking ground for a building program, reaching many more families in the community — Satan would be stalking the church trying to bring it down, he said.
Read More >Healthy organisms grow. Healthy people grow, healthy animals grow, healthy trees grow, healthy plants grow and healthy churches grow. It is a characteristic that God supernaturally breathed into all living things. And the body of Christ — the local church — is a living thing.
Read More >I’ll never forget the phone call I received from Joel Osteen to let me know his father — long time Houston pastor John Osteen — had passed away. It was January 1999, not a great way to start a new year. John Osteen birthed Lakewood Church on Mother’s Day 1959 in the most humble possible way — a rural feed store outside of Houston.
Read More >Step back and think about branding a church that still worships in a building built in 1891 (that’s not a transposition of numerals either) and in the center of that sanctuary stands a pulpit 118 years old. Then add the geographic context of being located in a city that is home to so many great churches.
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There is a buzz of activity in the air of downtown Dallas, and Robert Jeffress and First Baptist Church of Dallas will add to that buzz when the church begins to recreate its campus this fall. “We’re experiencing reinvigoration of the downtown area,” says Jeffress. “Ten years ago 300 people lived downtown, today 6,000 people live in the downtown freeway loop and it is growing every day.
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