The apostle Paul’s solemn charge to Timothy was to “preach the Word.”

Pastors are surrounded by stress-inducing circumstances. Whether it be the uncivil culture in which we minister, family burdens, financial pressure, dealing with problems in the church, or any number of other factors, stress is a daily reality for pastors.

A few days ago, our church hosted our annual World Impact Missions Conference. One of our guests here for the conference was Dr. Kevin Folger, who is the North American Director for Spiritual Leadership Asia.

The Spiritual Leadership Asia initiative has grown as God has continued to open amazing doors of opportunity for ministry in some of the most spiritually-needy places of the world. In this short bonus episode of the Spiritual Leadership Podcast, Dr. Folger and I discuss the three aspect of Spiritual Leadership Asia and share how you can pray for billions of souls in the 10/40 window who need the gospel.

Every church has core values, but not every church has written them down. And actually, it wasn’t until several years ago that I and some of the other leaders in our church worked on writing our core values. Both the process and the product proved to be a helpful exercise and tool. Today, we have our core values visibly displayed and give them to each new member. They are a key way that we communicate the philosophy of ministry and goal for the body life of our church family.

At a recent California for Christ meeting, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Alan Fong, Robbie Yapp, and James Kim to discuss the need for and challenges of church planting.