parenting in nyc
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To Lead Well, Pray Well
Continuing what has become a series of posts on leading missional communities, those who lead well also pray well. While this is primarily about missional communities, I see this in my own life when it comes to my marriage, family, work, or anything I’m in charge of, the more I consider these things in prayer…
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To Lead Well, Share Well
I was meeting with a leader of one of our Community Groups who was exhausted. He was ready to give up, discouraged by the lack of participation from the rest of the community and felt like he was doing too much. He thought the best answer was to quit leading and end the Community Group.…
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To Lead Well, Align Well
As my wife and I were preparing to have our first son, Eli, we had to make decisions about our vehicles. The plan was to sell the ’96 red Ford Mustang she had purchased in high school and to purchase a mom-mobile sedan and keep our Nissan Xterra I had been driving since college. Unfortunately,…
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To Lead Well, Be Faithful
Most people assume leadership involves a lot of activity, setting forth an amazing vision and doing monumental things or accomplishing many tasks. When we look at leaders, they seem to be incredibly busy and while leadership naturally lends itself to more activity, the only way to ever lead well is through faithfulness. Whether it’s in a…
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Wisdom from Weakness
Weakness is not touted in our culture. We are taught early on of the importance of strength, performance, and reputation in our society. We learn to hide any and all measure of weakness because it will affect our ability to seem strong. The weight of this can be crushing and your weakness, whether it’s personal…
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A Tale of Two Cities
this picture is from NY Mag’s Hurricane Sandy Pictures Last week I was able to attend the celebration of Hope For New York’s 20th Anniversary as an organization serving the poor and the marginalized of New York. Hope for New York was started by Redeemer Presbyterian in 1992 at the advice of John Perkins who…
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Good & Bad Messiness in Missional Communities
Every community faces messy seasons where things are not perfect in the community. This is true in group therapy, where they call this the storming phase of group development, and this is true of every small group in the church. This is an important phase for a community and especially for a missional community in…
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Your Missional Community Will Get Messy
Every gospel-centered missional community goes through a life cycle of forming and then having a time period of fun as they seek to enjoy and extend the gospel of Jesus Christ. Eventually, the community will find themselves in a period of messiness. Every leader I have known and I myself have felt like a failure…
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The Chief End of Missional Communities
This Sunday, our church concluded a series titled This is Our God. For the past 3 months, we’ve looked at the essence, nature, and character of God. As we ended our series, we spent time looking at responding to God through a special service that included corporate prayer, extended praise and worship, proclaiming our faith…
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Missional Communities Should Have the Most Fun
My wife loves to tell the soccer ball story. We both remember being around Christian communities growing up and in college that were really intense. They were intense because of a view that Christianity was about being serious because there was a mission at hand and if we “wasted time” having fun, we would miss…
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Like a Gothic Cathedral
As we have lived in New York the last few years, we have met some of the most interesting people and have been blessed to be invited into the lives of some of the families at Eli’s school. One of the families at Eli’s school owns a few restaurants in the city and has found…
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The Class of ’08
What every incoming freshman at Texas A&M doesn’t realize is that they, along with their entire freshman class, have been prayed for during the entire year before they come to College Station. In 2003-2004, I was the director of Impact, a retreat for incoming freshman aimed at connecting them to Christian community and God’s mission…
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What will you be known for when you’re 65?
This is the question I’ve been asking myself lately. I tend towards being ambitious and wanting to achieve great things, but after I preach a sermon, counsel someone, or discuss missional communities with another pastor I do some self-analysis about my end goals. My ambition leads me to want to be a great pastor, even…
Logan Gentry 