Alongside

When do we move from being good to becoming great? When does an organisation  or individual achieve greatness? When do we know that something that we have built will last for generations? Is it the CEO or the leader that makes the difference? Or is it their flagship program? Is it their track record, their rapid growth and amazing results that makes them great?   Looking at people, organisations, movements, companies around the world, there are very few things that they have in common, things they have done differently that moved them from merely being good to achieving greatness and lasting for a long time. It is not very difficult to spot but it is not easy to replicate as it needs commitment and tenacity to pursue what they did differently or to do very ordinary things consistently that brought them cult status. Here are a few principles or values that are indispensable if one wants to move from being just good to great and enduring on long after we are gone. Cla...

When we see a good model of christian leadership we love it, we celebrate it and we automatically levitate to it and want to emulate it but the fact is that it is on the list of endangered species. We see an increasing number of bad models in christian leadership around us and sadly it is not because of the lack of awareness, teaching or training that is available, in fact there are innumerable books, articles, podcasts and materials all around us on this one topic of christian leadership, but things are not getting any better. I firmly believe the the best place to look at is the Bible and one word that is constantly used in the old testament for leaders is Shepherds.  “Human, prophesy against the leaders of Israel, who are like shepherds"   Ezekiel 34:2;   " Many shepherds have ruined My vineyard, They have trampled down My field; They have made My pleasant field A desolate wilderness ." Jer 2:10;  " And David shepherded them with integrity of hear...

Have you ever wondered as a child of God what does God want to accomplish with your life? Have you struggled with this thought, “am I in the right place, doing the right thing, am I fulfilling Gods purpose for my life?” Well if you have then you are in right company, many of the heroes of faith have also struggled with this. Some of them have asked this existential question quite openly and found answers from God. Some of us has successfully navigated that maze and are finding ourselves in the right place, maximising all the God-given potential for His Glory, some of us are still groping in the dark, uncertain if this is what God has created me for. As we look at the heroes of faith in the Bible we can see many of them articulating their life’s longing, their desire and their very purpose in their own words. It was Joseph who said that in spite of the evil that the brothers had intended God had turned it out for Good, He sent me here ahead of you to save lives of many...

Another eventful and tumultuous year is pulling down the curtains and we are at the threshold of stepping into a new one with new hopes, new resolutions, great expectations and excitement. What has been the biggest takeaways, the big learning curves, the eye openers, the high and low points of this year? It is good to look back before we get all exited and dressed up to usher in the New Year. For some it has been an amazing year of blessings, of fulfilment of Gods promises, of lives impacted, open doors and breakthroughs in our lives. For some of us it has been a mixed bag of ups and downs, great excitement and great pain, pure fulfilment and terrible losses and for some of us it has been a pretty bad year in many ways with sickness, financial troubles and personal losses. But whatever it has been, it is very important that we hit the pause button for a moment and look back and take stock of what God has done in our lives before we step into a new year. In Psalm 103, King Da...

“ But David found strength in the Lord his God ”.  An amazingly beautiful and inspiring verse hidden in 1Samuel 30:6. David and his motley crew of men had just been humiliated and sent back from the battlefield by the Philistine generals with whom he had aligned for some time and living with in Ziklag. To make matters worse when they returned to Ziklag, to their horror they found their place raided by the Amalekites, their wives and children were taken captives and everything that they fought for was gone.   The response of these battle hardened fighters was pretty unusual, they cried!! in fact they wailed! Do men cry?  Brave men don't or should not cry and show weakness right?  Isn’t that what we were told from childhood?  But here Bible records that these tough men cried loudly till they had no strength left to cry. Probably some might argue, because it was an all men group and no women were around, they cried. No inhibitions in...

The fast paced world that we live in, constantly in a state of flux, with rising uncertainties, changing mores and notions, fads and ideas, finding that balance has become an increasingly arduous task. Young families who have started out with great promise and excitement are facing the maximum brunt, not being successful in handling it, they are going into a tail spin ending in terrible stress, break up and total mess. Pressure at work, scrambling to meet deadlines, handling finances, finding time for personal growth and faith, taking care of health, family- being a loving husband and a caring father,   socialising, finding your creative space and pursuing one’s passion, the list goes on and on. Honestly one might be wondering how on earth can I find time to manage all these. The pressure and stress might be getting onto our heads, there are many who have given up and taken refuge in alcohol and there are alarmingly innumerable marriages on the brink of divorce or have already...

The effects of post- modern and post-liberal theology on the church in general and on the Christian faith has been slow but steady ­­and the signs are ominously becoming visible each passing day. This slow churning has resulted in a form of progressive Christianity which brilliantly camouflages in myriad ways, often very subtle and not easily recognisable  or identifiable by even well-meaning Christians. Remember it is always packaged as progressive and colourful  as the bible calls it “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. It is not easy to pinpoint these half-truths and grey lies even for a well trained eye as it does not hold out as a coherent systematic thought or theology. It has embedded itself, widely scattering in different aspects of historic Christian faith making those slight twists and turns of deception. But the fact is that these deceptive teachings have deeply impacted and confused the body of Christ in such a way that we will find ourselves in no time on a dangerou...