I wish Christians would argue more.

No, I’m not being sarcastic or saying this with an eye roll. I mean it.

I want Christians to argue more and fight less. To take it a step further, I’d even say that fighting less depends on our willingness to argue more and better.

Arguing in the Classic Sense

To be clear, I’m not using the word “argue” in the sense that the apostle Paul did, when he instructed the Philippian church to “do everything without grumbling and arguing” (Phil 2:15). I don’t say “argue” in the sense of being quarrelsome or irritable or “loving the fight” of aggressive words.

I use the word “argue” in its classic sense: the ability to make or counter an argument that depends on logic and reason. To meet one argument with another. To argue with someone, civilly and respectfully, toward the discovery of truth.

Arguing vs. Quarreling

In his autobiography, G.K. Chesterton remarked that the bad thing about a quarrel is that it spoils a good argument! He hated when bad feelings overshadowed the making and countering of good arguments.

The ability to argue well is the hallmark of a civil society, and it should be the goal of thoughtful Christians. Chesterton provided a model of this in his frequent debates with George Bernard Shaw, a lifelong friend who saw the world almost completely differently than he did. The two of them argued, but they did not fight.

C.S. Lewis did the same. Michael Ward says Lewis “relished disagreement and debate.” He mentions one student, Derek Brewer, who remembered how Lewis would sometimes say, “I couldn’t disagree more!” But Lewis never “indicated he was offended or that Brewer was somehow unjustified in holding an opinion Lewis considered mistaken. Though they often differed, this led to a ‘fruitful dichotomy of attitudes,’ not to a chilling of their pedagogical relationship.”

Ward sums up Lewis’s approach:

“He could always distinguish the man from the man’s opinion, and he knew the difference between an argument and a quarrel. He would not allow himself to be betrayed into aggression.”

Why the Quarrels?

In This Is Our Time, I write that I’d love to see more arguing online, if by that we mean rational, reasonable intentions of persuading people to another point of view. Instead, we see quarreling online, where people are personally offended that someone else has a different opinion, so they dig in in order to defend the point of view they already accept.

Why does this happen? For three reasons.

1. The Rise of Emotivism

First, fewer people believe it is even possible to arrive at a conclusion in a moral debate. This has led to the rise of emotivism, which Alasdair MacIntyre defines as “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.”

2. The Rise of Worst Assumptions

In the emotivist environment, people assume the worst of their opponents. They no longer attempt to appeal to unassailable criteria or compelling reasons to make the case for one policy over another, which leads to deep suspicion that something other than reason itself is motivating their activism.

“If I lack any good reasons to invoke against you, it must seem that I lack any good reasons,” MacIntyre explains. “Hence it seems that underlying my own position there must be some non-rational decision to adopt that position.”

Do you see what has happened here? We assume that a nefarious motivation or irrational prejudice must be guiding one’s opponent, since there is no longer any way to base a particular point of view on a commonly accepted moral axis.

3. The Rise of Technological Reaffirmation

Finally, in a hyper-connected age, we are constantly reaffirmed in our “rightness.” The accessibility of endless information on our phones makes us think we have the knowledge we need most and that we are right.

This is why, if you check the Facebook comments and the Twitter followings of people and the comments section of online blogs and articles, you’ll stumble across people who seem, shall we say, less than pleasant. It’s because they’ve been in a years-long process of heart-formation by which (1) they’re convinced that they have all the knowledge they need—if not in their head, it’s right there on their phone, and (2) that they are right and their cause is righteous.

Put these two developments together (the idea that we cannot arrive at moral truth, and the rise of technology that reaffirms our own righteousness), and you can see why many conversations devolve quickly from argumentation to quarreling.

Civility as a Christian Gift

One of the ways that Christians can be faithful in this time, to stand out and “shine like stars in a crooked and depraved generation,” is by relearning the civility required for good argumentation, and then offering civil, rational discourse to our society. Os Guinness roots this calling in the gospel:

“Followers of Jesus are called to be peacemakers, with truth and grace; Paul asks us to speak the truth with love. We’re called to love our enemies and do good to those who wrong us. This is our Christian motivation for championing the classical virtue of civility.”

So let’s hope for more arguing and less fighting!

This article originally appeared here.

I like rules, lines and boundaries. I feel safer if I have clear parameters, which explains my love for graph paper.

I like it when everything is nice and tidy. The problem is, life isn’t always nice and tidy.

People around me don’t always play by my rules, and I’m the biggest boundary breaker of them all.

It would seem that the alternative to rules-based living would be no-rules living, rebellion and abandonment of moral restraint. But what if that isn’t the best alternative to legalistic living?

Jesus’ greatest confrontations happened with legalists who not only lived by rigid sets of rules, but quickly judged others by those rules as well.

The New Testament message—the gospel—is one of liberation from legalism, but it isn’t an encouragement to rebellion either.

It’s about being free to really live. But how? How can I really live a life free from legalism and still grow into the godly character that Jesus saved me to be?

Establish Some Foundational Principles

We can know certain things to be true, no matter what. They are unbreakable absolutes that cannot be compromised. We know at least this much:

1. God’s Word, the Bible (including the “Law”), is perfect, good, without any mixture of error, and therefore completely trustworthy as the basis for living life.
2. Holiness, complete maturity and Christlikeness is God’s goal for every believer in Christ.
3. Legalism never gets us to that goal. (So let’s move on…)

Get Honest About Legalism in Your Life

My name is Brandon Cox, and I’m a legalist. At least I still struggle with the remnants of legalism in my life.

I guess I’m a “recovering legalist” who still slips into the old frame of mind sometimes. In fact, I think we all tend toward legalism to varying degrees, and the longer we’ve been believers, the more susceptible we are.

How can you tell if you’re a legalist? Here’s a quick checklist…

1. I determine whether God likes me or not based on how well I’ve kept the rules.
2. I might acknowledge I was saved by grace alone, but I think my effort has something to do with staying saved.
3. I tend to pray less when I fear that God is probably mad at me about something.
4. I think I’m disqualified from the Christian faith because I’ve messed up, in spite of the fact that I’m still alive and breathing.
5. I tend to notice the “bad behavior” in others without giving thought to their past pain, poor upbringing or unknown circumstances.
6. When other sinners suffer for their choices, I hear a tiny voice saying “serves them right.”
7. I’m more passionate about the rules I find easy to keep, and minimize the ones I personally struggle with.
8. I’m all about being “in the Word” but sometimes fail to let the Word get into me.
9. I love going to Bible study more than serving or witnessing because it “feeds me” and makes me feel more spiritually mature.
10. I recognize that traditions are not necessarily biblical…unless they’re my traditions.

Thoroughly self-diagnosed yet? Let’s talk about the cure.

Go to the Cross for Healing

You need to know, up front, that you’ll never completely get over being a legalist.

Since the garden of Eden, God has been all about grace. It explains why God made coats of animal skins to cover the shame of Adam and Eve.

And since the garden of Eden, we’ve tried (with Satan’s help) to re-write the gospel to somehow include merit. As humans, we are rules addicts.

But we can break free. Jesus invites us to His freedom…

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.

—Matthew 11:28-30 NLT

Paul developed a distinctive theology of freedom.

So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law.

—Galatians 5:1 NLT

Here are some steps to take…

1. See your sin for what it is. It’s an offense to God to sin. No, you shouldn’t beat yourself up over past mistakes, but you also shouldn’t vindicate yourself on the basis that sin “isn’t a big deal.”
2. See Jesus for who He is. He’s your sacrifice. Nothing you’ve done could have prevented Him from going to the cross just for you. He’s the only perfect and righteous Savior.
3. See the cross for what it is. The cross was where He died for your sins. In other words, your sins are paid for. Stop trying to pay the debt yourself. Every time you do, you ignore the cross and insult His sacrifice.
4. Embrace grace. Revel in it. Bathe yourself in the idea of it. Roll around in the concept that you are free…free indeed!
5. Embrace grace…more. Don’t stop thinking about it. Read about it. Read about how Jesus showed it. Understand that you’ll never totally understand it, but don’t stop trying.
6. Show grace. In fact, mob people with it. Show it when you don’t feel like it, when it doesn’t make sense and especially when it would feel better to do otherwise.

Any other recovering legalists out there?

This article originally appeared here.

If you feel like you’ve lost your passion for ministry and can’t seem to regain the excitement and motivation you felt in earlier years, that’s a very good thing.

Where in the Bible do we see any of the early church leaders praying to “get their passion back”?

The idea that “passion for the ministry” is an indispensable requirement for long-term effectiveness is a lie the enemy dangles in front of us to distract us from our real work. This is the passion myth.

How many of us have spent weeks, months, even years fretting over the fact that we don’t feel passionate about what we’re doing any longer? It’s a pastoral epidemic.

This vague “search to regain my passion” drives senior pastors like you and me to seek new ministries, new spouses, new job descriptions, new mission statements, new elder boards, new staffs and new careers. Most often it leads to depression, and in some cases, to want to end our lives altogether.

I know because I’ve experienced this first-hand.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: Whenever a senior pastor has “lost their motivation” it is because they were drawing their “motivation” in the first place from one of four unhealthy motivation sources. Not only do many of us start ministry using these motivators, we dip back into the same bags of tricks once we lose our way.

Four Unhealthy Senior Pastor Motivators

1. Extrinsic Manipulation

One false motivator is what I call “extrinsic manipulation.” This happens when senior pastors manipulate factors outside of themselves to make themselves do what they cannot do on their own. You know this is your most common motivation trick if you constantly find yourself launching new projects, setting goals or recruiting accountability partners.

When senior pastors feel unmotivated, you’ll see them set into motion grand projects, campaigns or efforts that collectively unite the congregation to force the senior pastor to produce results.

Congregations are so used to seeing this kind of self-motivational tactic (and the motivation is so often indistinguishable from authentically Spirit-led efforts) that they’re usually unable to see what is causing their senior pastor to set new BHAG’s (big hairy audacious goals), build a new wing, launch a new church or tackle a new mission.

This unhealthy motivator is similar to the way some people “announce” on Facebook that they’re going to lose weight, then snap a picture of their overweight selves for the world to see. Their motivation for doing this is to unite the “world” to hold them accountable for what they are unwilling, or unable, to do on their own.

Without the false motivator of constantly setting goals, getting the congregation to hold them accountable for attaining them, getting them to depend upon them to raise the money to fund them, or work themselves into the ground to achieve them, these senior pastors would be left to find their own intrinsic motivations for staying in ministry.

There is a very good reason why we NEVER see God’s leaders in scripture setting goals.

2. External Validation

A second unhealthy motivator is the quest for external validation. Christian leaders often quickly dismiss the desire to please someone as a primary driver for going into or staying in ministry, as fluffy irrelevant psychobabble. This is unwise.

As human beings, we senior pastors are born wanting to please, even for highly independent personalities like my own. Parents, mentors, those who led us to Christ, professors, the parents we never had or wished we had, ministry competitors, elder boards, spouses—all of these and more can be real or imaginary people to whom we look for personal validation.

How am I doing? Am I successful? What could I improve on? What did you think of that sermon? Oh, you liked it? Great! Oh, you didn’t like it? Crap. Should I take that job? Should I move there? Do you think I’m focused on what I should be focused on? How do you think I’m doing?

When senior pastors feel validated, they feel motivated. When the validation wanes, their motivation wanes.

Here’s a little secret: External validation always wanes.

3. Adrenal Energy

As senior pastors, our bodies produce the hormone adrenaline to prepare ourselves to immediately address fight or flight situations.

Ministry is rarely a fight or flight situation unless we have creatively turned it into one.

One of the common things I see in senior pastors I coach is an unhealthy reliance upon adrenaline to accomplish basic ministry tasks. Unable to find an intrinsic center from which to tackle their daily priorities, they’ve created an entire lifestyle dependent upon adrenal spikes to provide biochemical ministry motivation. When the adrenaline wears off, they drink coffee or energy drinks to take over.

You know you struggle with this when your sermons are perpetually finished on a Saturday because you need the adrenal spike to finish them. God forbid that spike doesn’t come.

When I work with senior pastors to reorganize their weeks to provide two full days off of rest and demand that they see a dietitian to rid their bodies of the empty carbohydrates and chemicals they’ve been using to fuel themselves for years, they often flounder for a season.

They ask, “How do I get motivated to accomplish my weekly tasks if I’m not using caffeine, stimulants or adrenaline to fuel myself?”

My response: “Now we’re getting somewhere, my friend.”

4. New Employment Opportunities

This last false motivator is the nuclear option: finding another job.

When all else has failed—when every goal that could be set has been set, every mission statement that could be reevaluated has been reevaluated, and you’ve tried every single trick in the book to find motivation to do what you need to do but can’t—the nuclear option is always to find a new job somewhere.

Because the solution is always outside of ourselves, isn’t it?

Why yes, Jonah, it is.

I tried to leave my first ministry out of seminary after 30 days. I tried to leave my second ministry after 365 days. If it weren’t for my gracious wife helping me to see that my problem was MY problem, and not the (fill in the blank): _________ (the people, the eldership, the building, the lack of a building, the location, the lackluster demographics, the giving, the population size, the density of churched people, etc.), I would have left each of those situations after 30 and 365 days on the nose.

We’ve all been on that boat in search of Tarshish.

How to Lead Without Unhealthy Motivation

So you’ve been at a church long enough now that the old bag of tricks no longer works.

What do you do?

Here are some suggestions that might help.

1. Go on a “Unhealthy Motivator” Cleanse

Stop setting goals. Throw away your cans of Red Bull in the fridge. Permanently delete that resume you’ve been sending out to anyone who would read it.

In fact, tell your team that for the next year you’re not going to start anything new. No new groups. No new ministries. No manufactured “emergencies” that demand new solutions of any kind.

Can you imagine what your church would do if you couldn’t start ANYTHING new for the next year? We’re so used to the idea of constantly changing things we don’t realize what often drives those changes in the first place, do we?

Let’s strip away, one by one, every possible unhealthy motivator in your life that you’ve been using to stay “passionate” to do the work you’ve been doing.

In fact, if I were to ask you to list the top three unhealthy motivators you keep going back to over and over again, what would they be? What keeps you going?

Pull them out of your well-crafted bag of tricks and crucify them one by one.

To be used by God in a powerful way, we need to stand before him as our naked, unaided selves.

2. Scrub Your Psyche With Scripture and the Christian Classics

Since it’s difficult to recognize unhealthy motivators in our own lives, I believe it’s necessary to fill our minds with the thoughts and ideas of people who can call them out, and have successfully overcome them themselves. These people are almost always those who lived in a time and place different than our own.

There was a two-year period (when I was at that church I wanted to quit after 365 days) that I spent two full years reading nothing but books written by dead people.

I read the letters of Paul over and over and over again. I read the Journal of John Wesley, Justin Martyr, Augustine and The Desert Fathers. I read Chesterton, Lewis, Woolman and DeSales. It was an explosive renewal of theological conviction for me.

If you’re struggling to find your ministry equilibrium, I would encourage you to read the classics, go on retreats to monasteries and let God’s presence wash over you afresh.

Some of the most powerful moments of ridding unhealthy motivators in my life came while laying face down on monastery floors with scripture opened on one side of me and John Chrysostom on the other.

3. Approach Your Ministry Like an Artisan

The Senior Pastors I coach who have learned to continually discharge the duties of their ministries without the need to draw upon false motivators all have one thing in common: They treat their ministry work like artisans.

They approach their tasks in service to God and the church the way a medieval candle-maker would.

In pre-industrial times, people “apprenticed” themselves to an artisan to learn their craft. After a prolonged period of practice under supervised eyes, they became a journeyman, one recognized to practice their trade and make a living from it on their own. Those who distinguished themselves and had the financial wherewithal necessary to employ others were then considered master craftsmen.

At no point in this entire process was the focus on either the person learning their craft, or on the exponential super-incredible worldwide crazy-to-think-about-can-you-believe-it vision of what could happen in the future because of that bar of soap they were making.

It was about the product—the cloth, bread, beer, cheese, tables and knives.

Artisans got up and did their work with great pride. Day after boring day. Week after boring week. Month after boring month.

This past week I had a conversation with someone that helped them make a tough decision. I take pride and satisfaction in that conversation, and that is all. I have taught myself that I don’t need anything more than that. That talk in my mind wasn’t tied to something more. It didn’t validate my call to ministry. It didn’t confirm my gifts and abilities. It simply helped that person the way a saddle sold by an artisan would help someone ride a horse.

Three weeks ago, I wrote a sermon that I felt was really good. I was proud of the content. The exegesis was excellent. I lined up the introduction about as well as I could have. The application was both insightful and encouraging. Once written I didn’t need anyone else’s validation to know that it was a good sermon. Did I care whether people “liked” it? Not one bit. I liked it. I felt that God was pleased with my work. That was enough.

Working humbly and taking pride and satisfaction in our work is something that is insulated from critics. It is insulated from external validation. I don’t need to jack myself up with adrenaline to do my work.

Like a master craftsman, I practice my trade, then I go home and sleep well at night.

I don’t concern myself with great matters (Psalm 131:1).

I believe there is a reason the Apostle Paul was the greatest evangelist in the history of the world. There is a reason he started more churches and influenced more people than anyone among God’s people, before or since.

Besides the obvious calling and miraculous power of God on his life, Paul didn’t dwindle his time away in self-doubt trying to “regain his passion” after he lost it.

Paul simply did the work and allowed passion to unexpectedly show up, then quietly leave again with little fanfare.

One of the reasons I think Paul was able to do that was because he spent his ministry years bent over six days a week, from sun up until sun down, weaving animal skins into shoes, awnings and tents people could use.

“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you” (2 Thessalonians 3:7-8).

And it was that advantage—those values—that unique insight he gained from the daily grind—that gave him something we 21st-century knowledge workers lack: pride and satisfaction in something we produce with our hands.

That lack of a substantive, physical corollary in our lives—the absence of some actual physical task with which senior pastors can look to in their lives and say “I made that”—puts us at a disadvantage.

Martin Luther brewed beer.

The Apostle Paul made tents.

Without any such corollary, it skews our understanding of work, satisfaction and motivation.

Four hundred years ago, people didn’t write books about “motivation” and “personal satisfaction” because people weren’t asking those questions. They simply took pride in what they did, humbly accepted their lot in life and got on with the real reason they worked in the first place: to live.

Listen, feelings of excitement about ministry come and go. Feelings of excitement are great when they come, but excitement in ministry is to be enjoyed like a sunny day.

A beautiful day is great when it comes, but like a master craftsman, the work goes on when it doesn’t.

This article originally appeared here.

Before you preach your next sermon, take the time to answer these six questions. If you do, you’ll have greater clarity for the content of the message and the congregation will have greater clarity for the expected action from the message.

So, pastor, grab your sermon and ask God for wisdom as you dive into these questions.

Six Key Questions to Ask of Your Sermon Before You Preach it

1. Are my first five minutes interesting?

If you follow our sticky sermon structure, you’ll know that you’re asking this question of the engage section of your sermon.

We want to evaluate whether or not our first five minutes will cause people to lean in and take interest in what we’re sharing. This could be done with an interesting personal story, a shocking fact, or a joke that connects to the message. Whatever your introduction contains, make sure that it’s interesting (and obviously connected to the rest of the message). Interesting for interesting sake is pointless.

2. Do I show the importance of the subject?

Next, move to the tension section of the sermon where we’re moving from interesting to important and setting up our time of digging into the Scriptures.

Here we want to bring up the problem we face when it comes to the point of the text. We’re simply priming the pump for moving into the biblical passage we are going to look at. For example, if you’re preaching on Galatians 6:2 (bear one another’s burdens…) you could talk about the tension between knowing that we need to share what we are going through with others, but fearing what they may do with the information we give. It’s a tension that can be resolved once you move into the text, namely, it’s a two-way street and in doing so, we fulfill the law of Christ.

3. Am I giving a complete picture of the truth?

We call this the truth section of the sermon. This is where we dive into the passage of Scripture we are focusing on, do good biblical exegesis and help the congregation be in the text. Help them see what the original hearers or the people in the narrative saw. Help them feel what they felt.

When we ask this question, we’re really wanting to evaluate whether or not we are being true to the original intended meaning, putting the passage into the grand narrative of Scripture, and preaching the Gospel from the passage (here’s how to preach the Gospel every time).

4. Where does this intersect with life today?

It’s time for application. We want to move from the original intended meaning by using good hermeneutics and move to how this passage intersects with the here and now in a day-to-day kind of way.

Here we want to help people see that Scripture speaks directly to our lives in an intimate way. God’s truth is timely and timeless. Here we begin to move to that timeless truth that should propel us to some sort of response. We show what that response looks like generally and share our big idea/bottom line/main point of the sermon here.

5. What’s a powerful picture?

Specifically, we want to inspire through imagining or showing what life would look like if we allowed God to do this work in us that the passage speaks of (or responded in a certain way to the text or took an action—like bearing one another’s burdens).

Here our goal is to put feet to the future. If God used this sermon to do something in us, what could that look like? Help people see!

6. What should happen now?

When the rubber meets the road, where do we go? How do we go? What happens now? We want to help people take action. We should always call people to take action in response to our sermons.

Go to God in prayer and ask Him for wisdom in where to go here. If someone were to take action on Monday morning in response to the sermon, what would that action look like? Be specific.

What questions do you ask of your sermon before you preach?

Join the conversation and let us know. You can do so in the comments below or on social media: Join our Facebook Group, tweet us or post on our Facebook Page. We would love to connect!

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This article originally appeared here.

If you want to be in leadership, get comfortable with change. It’s part of the experience of every leader. The best leaders get accustomed to leading change.

Every leader deals with change, but in my experience, some handle it better than others. There are change agent leaders who seem to have an innate gifting at leading through change. I love to learn from these special leaders.

I’ve observed some common characteristics change agent leaders share.

Here are seven characteristics of good change agents:

Flexible

It doesn’t have to be their design. They simply want progress toward the overall vision. These change agents are never stubborn on matters that seem to have no vision-altering value. They navigate towards a solution, letting others have “their” way. Everyone walks away feeling as though they have won.

Courageous

Change agent leaders are willing to receive criticism and still move forward. They know how to filter through what is valid criticism—worth hearing—and what’s simply a venting of personal interest. They unwaveringly push through the junk that clouds progress.

Relational

Good change agent leaders value the opinions of other people and work hard to gain trust. They know ultimate change can’t happen without human capital and they are constantly investing in relationships. Networking is one of a change agents greatest tools.

Strategic

A change agent leader realizes there are steps to take and they carefully choose the timing of when to take them. They almost have a keen sense of discernment when it comes to knowing when to pull the trigger, when to wait and when to pull the plug completely.

Creative

Good change agents are able to see paths to success others can’t yet see. I need to be honest here and say I’d rather be strategic than creative. There are some who can always find a way to make their ideas work, but it comes at the expense of others. But, change often happens because someone chose to be creative. Effective change is one of the best forms of art in the field of leadership. This takes creativity.

Intentional

Change agent leaders make change for a specific purpose. They never waste a change. They know that every change has the potential to make or break a team and they work diligently to bring the best results.

Thorough

A good change agent follows through on commitments made and sees the change to fruition. They don’t give up until the post evaluation is complete and the lessons of change have been learned.

Think about your experience. Who are some of the best change agent leaders you have known?

This article originally appeared here.

In my various roles, I’ve been privileged to travel the world, talk to global brothers and sisters in Christ, and learn from them. I may be the professor, but they always teach me. Here are some things we North American Christians can learn from them:

1. The Bible is precious. We who have multiple copies of the scriptures miss this point. It would do all of us good to spend time with a believer who stays up all night to hear and read the Word of God because he doesn’t have his own copy.
2. Holiness matters. I’ve been with some believers around the world who lean toward legalism, but seldom have I been with any who are as lax about sin as North Americans tend to be. Global believers often struggle with our brand of non-life changing Christianity.
3. Worship is more than head-centered. Every culture is different, but I love worshiping with believers who give themselves fully to worship. From the African who jumps when he worships to the Ukrainian who sings with all his might, believers around the world challenge my often too stoic approach to worship.
4. Prayer makes a difference. I once stood for two hours praying nonstop with believers in a war-torn part of the world, and they were just getting started. When Christ is genuinely your hope and peace, you understand better the necessity and the value of prayer.
5. Persecution is real. For many believers, persecution is not just somebody else’s story on a sheet of paper. It’s their story. No article or website can speak the volumes that a believer who’s been faithful under persecution can.
6. Church membership means something. I’ve talked with local church leaders around the globe who shepherd large networks, and they can tell you much of the spiritual state of each believer. They take seriously the need for accountability and growth among believers.
7. North American Christianity is not the center of the Christian world. We tend to think we are, simply because our world revolves around us. Many believing groups around the world, though, have longer histories, more followers and much more to teach us.
8. Heaven will be really sweet. I already knew that, but thinking about the peoples of the world gathering around the throne is that much more powerful after meeting many of those folks.

What would you add to this list?

This article originally appeared here.