Category: discipleship
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There’s a quiet assumption running through much of the Western church that goes something like this: spiritual gifts are for a certain kind of Christian. The upfront ones. The confident ones. The ones who seem to have a direct line to heaven. The rest of us? We just serve on the welcome team, give our…
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A while back I came across a statistic that stopped me in my tracks. A leadership conference speaker mentioned that seven out of ten pastors in America were looking for other work. When I dug into the research myself — Barna Group, Lifeway — I couldn’t find that exact figure, but what I did find…
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Harvard confirms what the Bible already knows. Everyone wants to be happy. That’s not controversial. The question isn’t whether we want it — it’s whether we know how to find it. Arthur C. Brooks is a Harvard professor, bestselling author, and one of the world’s leading researchers on human happiness. He teaches the most oversubscribed…
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Sent, Not Self-Sent Paul was sent, he didn’t commission himself. That’s worth sitting with for a moment, because it challenges an image many of us carry without realising it — Paul the maverick, the lone genius, answering to no one but God. The reality is far more interesting. Paul was the most sent person in…
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The Women on Paul’s Team Open Romans 16 and start counting. Of the twenty-six-plus individuals Paul greets by name, at least nine are women. Not wives mentioned in passing. Not silent supporters. Women Paul names with the same language of ministry, labour, and partnership that he uses for his male co-workers. Women he calls deacons,…
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When Teams Break If apostolic teams were only ever a story of triumph, we’d have reason to be suspicious. The New Testament is too honest for that. The previous posts in this series have painted a picture of something remarkable — Paul’s divinely commissioned, gift-diverse, Spirit-formed teams achieving extraordinary things across the Roman Empire. All…
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How Apostolic Teams Form Nobody applied for a job on Paul’s team. There was no recruitment drive, no interview process, no job description circulated around the churches of Asia Minor. And yet Paul assembled one of the most effective missionary teams in history. How? The answer matters because it challenges almost every assumption we bring…
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Paul the Team Leader “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother.” Two names. One apostle. That line opens 2 Corinthians, and versions of it appear across Paul’s letters. Timothy gets named. So do Silas, Sosthenes, and others. But the pattern never varies: Paul names himself first, Paul…
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Apostolic teams today Open almost any letter the Apostle Paul wrote and you’ll notice something immediately: he rarely writes alone. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother” — that’s how 2 Corinthians begins. Philippians opens the same way. So do Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon.…
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By Paul Benger We live in a world obsessed with outcomes. Show us the metrics. Give us the results. What’s the function? But in the Kingdom of God, function isn’t the starting point—it’s the result of a deeper, more intentional process. Before God ever asks us to do anything, He forms us. Then He fills…
