This coming week, millions of people will be rejoicing or weeping as the 2022 political season comes to its climactic end. The emotions that are now building to a crescendo will not dissipate quickly or harmlessly. Many family, workplace and church relationships will...
Thank you for your prayer support during my training in Washington, D.C. last week. What an exhilarating experience! The training for congressional staff was rewarding for me as we engaged in discussions on how to apply the principles of relational wisdom not only in...
Lord willing, this morning I will have the privilege of teaching a three-hour relational wisdom seminar to congressional staff on Capitol Hill. This training was arranged by a U.S. Congresswoman who has become an advocate for RW and peacemaking in our nation’s...
By God's grace, our recent Sowing Peace Conference was a great success. In addition to enjoying outstanding worship and warm fellowship, we were blessed with 40+ keynote sessions and workshops that deepened our ability to model, practice and teach relational wisdom,...
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Kirk Cameron on his Takeaways show. It was one of the most stimulating interviews I've ever done, largely because Kirk himself became so energized as we explored the power of biblical peacemaking. If you'd...
The Christian church has been rocked once again by a major sexual abuse scandal, which involves the largest protestant denomination in the United States. As one of last Sunday’s headlines read, “Southern Baptists Refused to Act on Abuse.” The subtitle to this article...
To find your greatest weakness, first identify your greatest strength and then look right behind it. That’s one of the tragic results of sin: it twists our strengths into weaknesses, just as (-1) x 100 becomes -100. Are you highly intelligent and well-studied in the...
How effective is your church in spreading the gospel in your community? Are you simply waiting for people to find their way to your church, or are you moving out into your community with a practical and winsome strategy for sharing the gospel and winning souls to...
A young couple came to my office just before Easter one year and asked me to mediate the legal issues of their divorce. The wife had been unfaithful, and their relationship had been shattered. They had argued, excused and blamed for a couple of weeks and finally given...
There are two things you and I were never designed to experience: death and rejection. That is why they both feel so foreign and hurt so much: they are utterly contrary to what we were made for. When God created the world, everything in it was “very good” (Gen. 1:31)....
Forced pastoral exits are costing the American church millions of dollars a year. The kingdom cost for these forced exits is far higher. Consider these sobering statistics[1]: 23 percent of all current pastors in the United States have been fired or forced to...
Moses made a major mistake that many church leaders are still making today. He tried to single-handedly resolve all of the relational tensions and conflicts among the people God had placed under his care. When his father-in-law saw what Moses was doing, he admonished...
The apostle Peter's denial of Christ is a classic example of a neurological/emotional failure that today is commonly referred to as “amygdala hijacking." As Peter demonstrated all too painfully the night he betrayed Jesus (Luke 22:54-62), this process typically...
In 1997, Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt won Academy Awards for Best Actor and Actress for their roles in the romantic comedy, As Good As it Gets.* Throughout the movie, Helen Hunt demonstrates one of the most powerful ways to influence others. Before I describe her...
Jerry’s wife had filed for divorce. She was willing to mediate the legal issues but made it clear she had no interest in reconciliation. Ted had a similar problem with his church. Months of unresolved tensions had overflowed in a contentious elders meeting, with a...