Writing about faith, leadership, and the life of the church.
I’m a Christian, husband, father, writer, and organizational leader in Austin, Texas. I write about faith, leadership, the church, and the patient work of forming people and organizations.
This is a place for essays and working ideas—some new, some drawn from more than fifteen years of writing here.
Recent writing
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Leadership and Administration
Leading and administrating are the two gifts easiest to mistake for competence, which is why they are the two most often left unnamed. And zeal is not the problem with a leader who has…
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Service, Helping, and Mercy
Service, helping, and mercy are the gifts that make a church feel like a family. And we tend to kill them in two ways: we consume them invisibly, or we promote the people who…
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Three Things We Mean by “Apostolic”
People use the word “apostolic” for three different things: a passion, a gift, and a calling. Pulling them apart matters, because a word carrying three jobs eventually does none of them well, and the…
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Gifts or Gifted People?
Ephesians 4:11 doesn’t name capacities; it names people. And whether apostleship is a capacity the Spirit distributes or a person Christ appoints is a question I’ve been wrestling with for almost twenty years. This…
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Two Kinds of Spiritual Gifts
The gift lists in Scripture slide between practices, gifts, and gifted people, and most of our confusion starts there. One overlooked text sorts the whole business into two kinds: speaking and serving.
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The Organizing Principle of the Church
For most of my ministry life I have said that mission is the organizing principle of the church. I have come to think the gifts of the Holy Spirit are, and that the difference…
About this site
This site is both a working notebook and an archive. New essays appear alongside material from years of ministry, leadership, and life in Austin. The older work remains because people continue to use it—and because it shows how my thinking has developed.
Current work
My current work includes Greater Austin Mission Society and Engstrom Ventures.
You can also explore the resources gathered from earlier seasons of ministry and leadership.
Receive new essays by email
Occasional writing about faith, leadership, the church, and the work in front of us.