Todd Engstrom

Category: church

  • 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.

  • 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 is structural.

  • Should I Plant a Church?

    Church planting is a particular calling, not a general one, and three questions test it: internal desire, external confirmation, and opportunity. This is the frame I taught in a workshop with The Equipping Group, and it includes what to do when only one or two of the three hold. Refusing the calling you do not…

  • Lessons I Shared With a Younger Leader

    What sustains a leader over decades is slow formation rather than visible success, a long obedience in the same direction. A younger pastor in Austin came with a notebook full of questions, and these are the answers I gave him, mostly about disciplines built early, suffering met with joy, and callings kept in the right…

  • Who Do You Love?

    Networking asks who you know. Kingdom building asks who you love. I keep coming back to John 17, and after the fracturing of the last few years I think the community apologetic I once taught as an evangelistic strategy has to be relearned between churches and leaders themselves.

  • When is a Group a Church?

    Church planting lives in long seasons of in between, where it is unclear whether you are forming a group or shepherding a church. Clarity does not rush that process, it gives it direction and a trajectory, so this is the minimum I think has to be true before a group is a church.

  • Why Plant Churches

    The question in Austin has shifted from why not plant a church to why we even need more of them. Austin is not a city saturated with churches, it is a city unevenly served, and the growth corridors out toward Kyle, Buda, Jarrell, and Elgin are among the least served of all. The hesitation underneath…

  • The Church Isn’t a Safe Place

    The church was never meant to be a safe place as the world defines safety. It exists to make you holy and obedient, not comfortable, and my worry is that the mood of the day is shaping the church more than the Word of God. Not safe, but secure.

  • Gratitude for Partnership in the Gospel

    Christian community is not built on consumerism but on covenant partnership, sustained not by preference but by promise. I used to teach at The Stone that we should aim for mission over community, and I have come to think that was short-sighted. What Paul commends in Philippians is neither one first, it is partnership in…

  • The Longing Beneath the Form: Ancient Future and Nostalgic Novelty

    Ancient future and nostalgic novelty look like opposites, but they come from the same desire, to belong to something lasting, to be from somewhere and to be going somewhere. The form is not the same as faithfulness, so the better question is not which one is right but what is forming us.

  • Jesus Has All Authority—Stop “Releasing” People to Do Ministry

    If you are in Christ, you have been commissioned, and you do not need a second opinion or a stamp of approval to make disciples. A friend recently told me he wanted to do that in his home but was not sure he had permission. Elders carry real authority, but it is mediated, not ultimate,…

  • The Deadline Dilemma in Ministry

    Ministry tends to explain its fluid deadlines as prioritizing people over projects. I wonder whether it is less about prioritizing people and more about avoiding accountability, because deadlines force clarity and reveal priorities, and that kind of exposure is uncomfortable.