On a regular basis, I present information. Weekly, I preach sermons and teach Bible studies. Periodically, I teach at universities. Suffice it to say that I’ve been a bad presenter in the past and have been witness to some bad presentations in my time. So, let me give you 10 warnings.

IKEA is a store based in Sweden. They are perhaps best known for their flat-pack furniture. Recently, I purchased a new desk from IKEA which is really not a desk. It is two units of drawers, a long table top, and support leg for the center.

I think there are several lessons on leadership that we can learn from IKEA and the way they sell their products.

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Image is a word associated with many things in our day. People maintain an image in front of others. An image is an idea or concept still being worked out. We work on our self-image. Perhaps the word is so far-reaching because we are a so visually stimulated.

Whenever people meet one or both of my sons, the issue of image normally surfaces because they look so much like me. (We are praying that they will grow out of it.) We’ve heard all sorts of comments such as:

“You boys look just like your father when he was your age.” “You can’t deny those two.” “They are you’re spitting image.” (Which, by the way, is a gross description.)

They take it all in stride. At this point in life, being like Dad is not too terrible. I pray that I can be the kind of man that they will always want to emulate. I want to have an image that is worth bearing in themselves.

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In your small groups, it is likely that discussions will happen where people disagree. Passions will flare up and debates may break out. All of that is a good thing. We want the members of our groups to wrestle with the truths of the Bible and to do so together. When we deal with issues that fall inside of our doctrinal consensus as a church but there is disagreement on particular points, we need to learn how to discuss them properly. Your groups may have already had one or plenty of such discussions where interpretations were challenged. Let me give a bit of advice about how to handle such discussions and disagreements.

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The research revealed eight factors at work in the lives of believers who are progressing in spiritual maturity. We refer to them as the attributes of discipleship. They are not necessarily new ideas, but they stand out as key ideas in the lives of North American Protestants.

Sometimes, I need a refresher on leadership. My current ministry is as the pastor for a 128-year old church in a medium-sized coastal town. We are a medium-sized church that is learning to more closely focus on missional ministry. As with all churches, we have a history of growth and decline. Now that I’ve been here for 16 months I did a bit of personal inventory recently. The following four ideas came to the surface.

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In Acts 9:31, a description is made of how the church was beginning to mature and minister in a hostile culture. I find that there are six marks in this single verse.

Discipleship is more than merely consuming information and modifying your behavior. It is relating day-by-day to Jesus and His church.

As a pastor, I need to evaluate my own heart and preparedness for the moment of the sermon. In doing so, I’ve come up with five generalized styles of preaching: four of which need to be guarded against and one that I hope is the regular manner in which I preach.

In our hectic world of go, Go, GO!…it seems difficult to simply find time to sit down and think. In my own life over the last few months, I have felt the pressure of three different jobs, being overrun with the need to produce content (which I have not), and not abandon my family in the process.

Oftentimes, I do not have time to sit and think simply because I overcommit. Being a publishing director for LifeWay is my full-time job. Being a teaching pastor and elder of The Fellowship is my bivocational ministry. This summer, teaching Christian Leadership as an adjunct professor for Union University has been an addition to it all. So, when you are busy…and we’re all busy...we need principles we hold to in order to simply think, dream, and strategize.

With some of my team, I recently shared seven ways that I am trying to implement more brain time into my life. Here they are:

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An assignment without a means of measuring success normally ends in frustration or abandonment. In the church, our work is to make disciples. But can you really measure discipleship?

A strong case can be made that it is ludicrous to attempt to measure transformation in a person’s life. Nevertheless, there are biblical injunctions that halt our progress into sin and prescriptions that lead us toward spiritual maturity.

In the Transformational Discipleship project led by LifeWay Research, we did not set out to randomly create objective measurements against which a person’s life would be deemed infantile, growing or mature. However, we did uncover attributes that indicate spiritual growth and/or the desire that growth is occurring.

The research revealed eight factors at work in the lives of believers who are progressing in spiritual maturity. We refer to them as the attributes of discipleship. They are not necessarily new ideas, but they stand out as key ideas in the lives of North American Protestants.

Here is a quick tour of how God reveals Himself in every book of the Bible.

Have you ever met that guy who just knew more than everyone else in the room? Or wanted to prove it? Does knowing any of this make you feel better about life and eternity? No, as Ecclesiastes shows.