Sometimes when I drop our children off at Sunday school, I wonder what’s really going on. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great church with a great children’s program. There are whimsical characters painted on the walls, shelves full of toys, boxes of crafts, reams of Bible curriculum. There is a check-in and check-out process so parents leave with the right child.

And there are lots of people who love our kids – from the director of the program to the shift...

Last time we talked about the benefits of creating a role and outcome statement for employees. Now let's talk about how to do it. Only 60% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work, which leaves 40% guessing and the engagement level plummeting.

At my day job at EnergyCAP, Inc., we’ve created role and outcome statements for every employee, which are accessible to the entire company. Like I said, doing so has yielded big benefits for our employees,...

A few years ago, the Barna Group released results from a multiple year survey involving 3,000 self-described Christians. The survey was about spiritual gifts. Although it’s clear from the Bible that spiritual gifts matter deeply to the health of the Church, the survey revealed four troubling statistics.

28% Think They're Empty-Handed

For example, 1 Corinthians 12 says twice that spiritual gifts are given to each believer, but 28% said they didn’t have a spiritual gift....

Someone once asked me what difference Jesus Christ makes. It’s a good question. We should be able to see Christ in his followers. Unfortunately sometimes we don’t. Sometimes Christians act far from the person of Jesus we see in the Bible. And they repel others from the magnificent, passionate, and revolutionary Jesus. I’m sure I have at times.

But let’s not forget that it’s a process. We don’t grow into Jesus and become a new creation fused of Christ and us...

You may know that I’m a life coach and I use various personality assessments in my work. Some people think personality assessments are chiefly self-centered activities, driving us to sit around all day pondering ourselves, “Here’s what I think about me, what do you think about me?” And therefore, they should be avoided.

But I have a different opinion. I think all activities can be self-centered.

Even the act of helping people, which at first sounds nobly altruistic,...

Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

What does it mean to be filled by God? It begins with hunger.

I've been praying before, and suddenly, everything disappeared. All that mattered was what he said, what he promised. All that mattered was what he did, what he was doing. All that mattered was God.

I was at once like the dark, barren world before it was made, still formless and empty and void. Then slowly and surely...

At a recent “Strengths Bag Lunch,” employees of EnergyCAP, Inc. (ECI) discussed how to get better at “Responsibility.” The entire company has taken the CliftonStrengths assessment, which measures 34 areas of talent. The idea is to help people to develop their top areas of talent into strengths, and then utilize their strengths to achieve their outcomes.

This simple approach yields great results. Studies show that when folks are able to do what they do best every day,...

I read the story of a man who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and because he didn’t have fancy lawyers, he went to prison.

He spent 19 years there, and although he didn’t do what they say he did, he decided to make the most of it. He learned to speak Spanish and play seven instruments and earned a college degree.

He came up for parole four times, and even though he learned to do these civilized things and behaved well, they weren’t good enough reasons for the...

If you want to build a strengths-based culture in your organization, it won’t happen overnight. Sure, you may want your coworkers to take hold of strengths instantly to receive the tremendous benefits of focusing on strengths like: increased productivity, retention, job satisfaction, positive interactions with coworkers, and so forth.

But remember, Rome wasn’t built overnight. A strengths culture isn’t built overnight either. If it takes you more time to get momentum and...

Note: A few months ago, a college ministry approached me for help. It wanted to inspire its people to pray more. This post is based on the advice I gave.

Let’s say you’re the director of prayer for a college ministry.

One of your goals is to motivate your people to pray more. But this isn’t easy. Everyone seems to be as busy as ever. They have endless choices for spending their time. And “praying more” doesn’t seem to be a pressing concern. To be...