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Last fall I had the opportunity to make a new friend in my life. Pastor Steve Sjogren was the guest speaker at our pastors conference. When I first started listening to Steve I was immediately struck with the fact that this man was not your normal guest speaker you would find at a pastors conference. Although he at one time pastored one of the largest Vineyard churches in our fellowship, the man I saw was what he himself would call an "irregular" person.

You see, a while back, while Steve was still pastoring the Cincinnati Ohio Vineyard church, he had a near death experience. That N.D.E. forever changed his life.

Heaven's Lessons

Recently Steve asked me to read his new book published by Thomas Nelson and review it. I told him that I am not a book reviewer but because we had become friends, I would share with all of you what I thought about the book. What I did not expect was to be so touched and transfixed by the book. I honestly could not put it down and I am not a big book reader. FULL POST

Recently I got my feathers ruffled. That happens at times when people say or do things that are contrary to the things I hold dear or contrary to biblical teachings or both. This time it was both. I was sitting down having dinner with some friends of mine who are in pastoral ministry and looking to retire. We were talking about what they were looking for in a replacement for them. In the context of that conversation the statement was made, “we would not consider someone who was not married”.

What!

Now I understand that there is a generational difference of perspective going on here and I understand that calling someone to be a pastor who is single presents its own challenges, but that statement flies in the face of biblical recommendation and is seriously prejudicial.

So I want to take a moment not only to vent, (Can you allow me the grace to do that?) but also to set the record straight that being single is not some type of disease, stigma, or disqualifying condition.

Single People Are Complete People

There is a misnomer in our society. It is the thought that we have to find someone else to be our other half or that we have to be married to be complete. This is totally against what the Bible teaches concerning the nature of man. God created man in His image. He created them male and female. It does not teach that He created two half beings that when they come together they are complete, but instead it teaches that both male and female are complete creations formed in His image. FULL POST

Early in my Christian life while I was starting the first church that I started, I had a district leader make a statement that stuck with me all throughout my life. He said, “I am not sure if you have holy ambition or are wholly ambitious.” That sent me down a path of self discovery that eventually led to my belief in pursuing servanthood and obscurity rather than climbing the ecclesiastical corporate ladder. So let me share with you what I believe is a biblical mandate for promotion compared to what is accepted as the normal way within the church and the world.

God’s Method of Promoting Leaders

1 Samuel 16:7 FULL POST

Recently my heart has been stirred about the things we make time for and the things that we never seem to have enough time for. What we make room for in our lives is a direct indicator of where our priorities lie. My thought processes came to a head the other night when I was spending some time talking to a friend about how it seems that churches are afraid of moments of silence in their services. It seems that every moment of a worship service is filled with something and that God would have to make an appointment months in advance if He actually wanted to show up and say something. It is because of these thoughts that this year I am going to work on making room for God in my life to a much greater degree.

Why Does God Need Some Elbow Room?

If God is Omnipresent and dwells within each of us, why do we need to make room for God? Isn’t God big enough to announce His presence with loud fanfare and extreme power? Of course He is! However, that is not His nature to do so except in extreme circumstances. It is the exception to the rule rather than the rule. The Holy Spirit is depicted in scriptures as a gently dove. The Spirit can be grieved (Eph 4:30) and quenched (1 Thess 5:19). These are not characteristics of a gregarious and forceful nature but instead are the characteristics of someone who does not forcefully draw attention to oneself. He leaves it to us as to whether or not we will listen to that still small voice and the gentle cooing of a dove to lead and guide us in what we do. FULL POST

Many Christians have gotten a little fed up with Facebook. Whether they are finding that their posts mysteriously disappear, or are not shared with all of their friends due to Facebook’s decision to censor religious speech, (Facebook, Apple, Google censoring religious speech?) or they are tired of posts that use inappropriate pictures or language, or they just want a place where they can go to get uplifted and encouraged, Christians have been looking for alternatives to Facebook. It was because of this need that I decided to use the popularity of my own website Taber's Truths and our Facebook Fan Page to enter the Christian social networking niche and launch Christian Faithbook. However, since I have always had a big tent philosophy towards other Christians and Christian websites, I wanted to provide you with a list of the best Christian Social Networking sites for 2013. I have used a 3 point criteria for this list. I have made the decision on who to include based on the number of members, number of features, and whether the site is moderated to weed out spam and inappropriate posts and pictures. This list is not ranked, but just the 10 best Christian social networking sites I could find based on that criteria. FULL POST

Over the 33 years I have been a believer in Jesus there has been many times where I have gone through trials, testings, and battles. I can’t say that they were fun times but the were both necessary and part of building my faith to where it is today. When the enemy comes in like a flood, you can be rest assured it is not because you are doing something wrong, but it is because you are doing something right. So let me encourage you in your own spiritual walk and share with you some of the things I have learned about how the enemy attacks you and how you can overcome them. So let’s look at the verse found in Isaiah 59:19.

When The Enemy Comes In Like A Flood Bible Verse.

Isaiah 59:19 FULL POST

This morning I want to share with you something that I have learned over the last 33 years of being a Christian that truly separates those that are successful from those that are not. It has to do with whether or not you have a giving and generous spirit or what I call a miserly spirit. Now I am really not talking about money. What I am talking about is what Jesus was talking about when He made this statement.

Matthew 10:8

“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

Now all of us have received great abundance and blessings from God. Not all of those things are material things, but all of them are things that have helped us rise up from the ashes of where we were and set us on a path that is so much better than the one we were on. Some of us have been healed, all of us have been cleansed, we were born again from the dead, and we came out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of His dear Son. So here is the principle. Since we have been given such abundance from God freely without charge, we are to be givers to others as well. FULL POST

One of the things that God has used me in over the years in ministry is healing wounded churches. Regardless of whether or not this is your first pastoral transition or one of many, I hope that you will take what I am about to share with you to heart and then apply it in a relevant way to those that love Jesus there in your community.

Any time you have a pastoral transition it is a tough season for the body of Christ at a church. This is especially true for the Vineyard churches that I am now part of because they have not had a lot of experience with pastoral transitions since they are such a new movement. Usually a Vineyard church is founded and pastored for a long season by one man that everyone naturally follows since he started the church. There is no questioning of authority since he established relational authority individually with each person attending as they started attending. As the Vineyard is reaching it’s 30 year mark or so, many of the men who started and pastored their churches are retiring. They either did not raise up a replacement or sent qualified replacements to plant other churches or they only trained people to be church planters and founding pastors. This has left a gap, both in our churches and in our leaders concerning the differences between starting a church and a pastoral transition into an established church. Both our churches and our leaders have very little experience with the latter. I suspect this is not uncommon with other non denominational or new organizations as well. FULL POST

Recently I was asked to chime into the discussion concerning some views and beliefs of Brian McLaren. He is called by some people, an Evangelical leader. Maybe I have gotten old. Maybe I am just too “old school” to understand certain things about what is called “post modern Christianity” or the “emergent church”. But to me, what I read and saw was not what I would consider views and beliefs that fit into the broad definition of Evangelical, of whom I have been a part for going on 34 years.

In an interview done by Glass House Theology, Brian was asked some questions that caught my attention. Primarily the question asked of him concerning his views on atonement. Here is an excerpt from that interview.

Q: In your book, “A New Kind Of Christianity,” you describe how, while a pastor, people would come to you and ask “good questions” that eventually unraveled your set doctrines. Can you tell us one that stuck with you and how it informed your reassembled beliefs? How did you make sense of this “unraveling?” Why was it OK that your belief structure evolved? FULL POST

I come across many people that say they love God but do not see the need to attend a church. Some of this is caused by the fact that the church has not done a very good job of communicating why they are relevant and important in the life of a Christian. Some of it is caused by the people in church doing things that were not the best for the people attending that church. Part of it is caused by people not being surrendered in their life to God’s will for them. Whatever the reason, they are forgetting that there are some very good reasons why we should go to church.

Before I get started, let me define what I mean by church. I am not talking about a denomination or a building. I am talking about the biblical definition of a church which is a gathering of believers together for worship, instruction, fellowship and prayer. Just going to a church building no more makes you a Christian than going to McDonald’s makes you a Big Mac. FULL POST