My Wednesday post on how the glory of God is the only fire that can sustain evangelistic zeal in local church ministry, may seem a very indirect evangelistic approach to you. If you believe intentional evangelism is what reaches people, you may find it hard to accept what I am writing.

In John 9, the disciples wanted to debate with Jesus about the source of a man’s blindness—when Jesus saw him much differently. Not as an issue to discuss, but as a person to help. Why do some Christians see everything so differently? Possibly they have become consumers of spiritual content vs. disciples who are not [...]

This is Holy Week. And with the outpouring of ministry that will accompany it among our churches, I want to take a few minutes to encourage my fellow pastors as we prepare for its significance. Visit TheDayJesusDied.com Download the videos Download the devotionals

The sum total of human opinion is often very inaccurate—and we are neither as bad as our critics say, nor as good as our fans say. I like to make scriptural lists…and the one I brought to church with me last weekend was this list of five biblical thoughts on public opinion.

Nothing stirs my heart about faithful service to Christ and His church more than a fresh account of God at work through the power of the Gospel. Watch the story below, shared in our services last weekend, and be encouraged.

Like many of you, on the first weekend in December our worship services began celebrating the season of Advent and looking forward to Christmas. And let me just say, I love our church. We are blessed with many talented musicians and worship leaders who faithfully lead us, week after week, into the awesome presence of [...]

“And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.” Mark 1:22 “And they were all amazed…saying, ‘What is this? A new teaching with authority!

> View the statement read in our church on October 13-14.

When was the last time you participated in a faith-driven, expectation-filled prayer meeting that invited God to reveal His glory and show up in power at your church? Not where one or two people pray the will of God, but where everyone in the room

The New Testament knows nothing of an unbaptized convert. Jesus asked us to do two specific things—to remember His sacrifice with the bread and the cup, and to be baptized. I’ve been preaching verse-by-verse through the book of John in a study called Authentic Jesus. A few weeks ago the entire message was dedicated to [...]

It was a real honor for me to preach for the third time at the Southern Baptist Convention last night in New Orleans. I felt very small, sandwiched between Dr. Jack Graham

Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. —John 2:24-25

This year at Harvest we’re walking verse-by-verse through the book of John. Last weekend’s teaching was on Christ’s first public miracle, at the wedding in Cana. And while God does not promise prosperity or healing in every circumstance (2 Corinthians 12:7), He does continue to work

Wow. Yesterday, after 2.5 days of pouring into and worshiping with over 2000 pastors and leaders from around the world, we closed out Harvest University 2012. Today, I’m thanking God for the outpouring of His Spirit

Today kicks off Harvest University, our annual church planting conference. Right NOW we’re gathered with a packed house of 2000 pastors and ministry leaders from Harvest Bible Chapels around the world

Harvest Bible Chapel is now on 7 campuses—and each is a story of reluctant expansion, given our greater passion to plant autonomous churches. When dying congregations have come for help or facilities have been given to us, we have infrequently multiplied locations

We are wanting to give God glory for the work He is doing in our church—taking us deeper and further into the joy of His gospel than ever before.   God forbid that I should boast, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. —Galatians 6:14

How many of us have launched out to serve the Lord with an expectation of how it’s going to be, and found it’s not like we thought?

When people are looking for a church home, they want insider information—to learn what’s behind the service they’ve just attended and the core values the church is built upon. At Harvest Bible Chapel, those values are known as

Merry Christmas Eve to you and your family! If you’re like most believers, you want to connect with your family and have fun, play games, share a meal together…

The Hebrew shalom is a universal greeting; it means “peace, a complete state of well being.” But the New Testament significantly expands the concept of peace.

Again, consider this amazing verse of Scripture that tells of Jesus Christ and what He came to accomplish. Isaiah 9:6, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder:

I love my children, and they love me. I love my father, and I have always known his love. But hear this: No human can fill the Father hole in the human heart. A good father helps, but

Consider again Isaiah 9:6, overflowing with a richness of depth and dimension about our Savior Jesus Christ: “Unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be

You know you’re talking to a wonderful counselor when they open the Scriptures and speak the Word of Christ into your life. Find people who will go against the grain of what you want (counseling to your flesh) and speak the Word into your life that you need.

  Something awesome, maybe unparalleled (for us), is happening in our church. There is a fervency and unity and moving of God’s Spirit in our services that is provoking such expectancy every week. It’s the worship and the Word and the hunger of the people…it’s…I can’t totally explain it, but it is truly AWESOME!

I have had to apologize a lot through the years—for things I did, for things I should have done, or should have done better.  I have been back at it in recent days, and a couple of weeks ago I shared with the church family what I have learned in Apology School.

Sometimes I get weary of people arguing for one side as though the other does not exist, when in reality it often does. Some arguments involve absolute truth and have only one side. But most division (outside what the Scriptures prescribe specifically) involves matters of

The post I’d mentioned earlier this week about what multi-site pastors give up for the gospel, is still in process. Watch for that next week. Here, instead, is a foundational principle of preaching: Preach the authority of God’s Word without apology.

Some current thinking on issues that have been getting a lot of air time recently.   RE: Celebrity Pastors Every pastor manages a certain amount of increased profile and a tendency on the part of people to elevate them beyond

A few weeks ago, we rushed out of church on a Saturday night and headed to downtown Chicago for an important youth event at our Harvest Cathedral in the heart of the city.  What a joy to proclaim the incredible truth of Psalm 27:4

Amazing how quickly a problem in the church can draw conversation and criticism from church members. I thought that headline would attract some readers, but isn’t that kinda sad? How about taking time to read about a pastor who is thrilled with and blessed by the Elders

I have the tremendous blessing of being surrounded by a highly-motivated and highly-competitive staff, numbering some 400+. What I have observed is that if we are not intentional about selfless relationships that bless and encourage, we can find ourselves ‘writing checks’ we can’t cover and overdraft with the very people we care about most.

When you talk about the purpose of the church, what is the one word that should be at the forefront of your mind? Vertical. What do I mean by that? Find out here.

So much emphasis today is on the power of personal persuasion in sharing the gospel. What to say, how to say it. Reasons to believe, proofs for the authority of scripture -methods for gaining credibility blah blah blah. It’s always helpful to hear an actual testimony of how someone got saved.

Are you serious about sin? Because God is. And the people of Harvest Bible Chapel did some serious soul-searching and sin confession to put unforgiveness to death. Take a look at this video of the funeral we held at the Elgin Campus for those sins. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about forgiveness. The past two weekends at Harvest, I preached a series on forgiveness that God used in a powerful way.  Find below a summary of what we have been learning together.  If you apply some of the things we have been teaching you can get your heart to [...]

After a great weekend of preaching through Revelation 14, we left Tuesday morning on the second (final!) leg of our Bus Tour with Walk in the Word. This week, I have 40-some pastors from Harvest Bible Chapel traveling with me and the Worship Team. Praise God for the lives that He is changing for eternity [...]

We just celebrated ten years of church planting at Harvest Bible Chapel. By God’s grace, we have planted 45 churches in the past ten years. So, I am often asked what should a church consider before it plants a church. Check this out.

Tomorrow we will take some time to remember the amazing sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross through some powerful, yet reflective services at our church. I trust that you will set some time aside do the same. Romans 5:8 says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, [...]

Hey: Thanks for coming back to this blog again and again; our audience is really growing. One of the things I want to accomplish here is to encourage pastors to keep “preaching the Word.” Popular today is the notion that to really reach people you have to some how ‘get beyond the Bible.’ We have [...]

I am leading my church family through the New Testament book of Revelation this year called “The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Learning to Hope in the King and the Kingdom.” We started last fall and we’re going verse by verse, week by week through this final book in the book God wrote. Now that we [...]