A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics: People now sleep two and a half fewer hours each night than people did a hundred years ago. You're sleeping less than your grandparents did. The average workweek is longer now than...

The importance of helping members develop friendships within your church cannot be overemphasized. Relationships are the glue that holds a church together. Friendships are the key to retaining members. A friend once told me of a survey he took in a church. When he...

"Be tactful with those who are not Christians...Talk to them agreeably and with a flavor of wit, and try to fit your answers to the needs of each one" (Col. 4:5-6 JB). When I started Saddleback Church, I had about 10 years of sermons stockpiled from my previous...

My sister recently found a picture of me as a mop-haired 3-year-old standing next to a birthday cake for Jesus. The cake was my idea, a burst of preschooler inspiration in response to my mother's explanation that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth. I...

At Saddleback, we've been using the Internet as a tool to develop, grow, and sustain our congregation. Of course, the Internet will never replace face-to-face fellowship, but it is a serious mistake to think that everything the church does—worship, discipleship,...

When you become a pastor, you become a leader. I'm often asked specifics about my administrative style, but I think it's more important to understand some basic concepts about leadership: 1. Nothing happens until someone provides leadership for it This is a law of...

Think about it: the most valuable asset people can give to your church is their time. If a man or woman comes to me and says, "Pastor, I have four hours a week to give to the church in ministry," the last thing I'm going to do is put him or her on some committee....

Recently it was reported that 82 percent of the churches in my denomination do not have a soul-winning program and that last year more than 11,000 of the churches did not report a single conversion! I believe one of the reasons so few churches engage in outreach is...

The longer you're a believer, the less you think like an unbeliever. After you come to Christ, your interests and values change. Because I've been a Christian for most of my life, I think like a Christian. I don't normally think like an unbeliever. Worse than that,...

Psychology Today once asked 52,000 Americans, "What does it take to make you happy?" Their answers varied, but the interesting thing is that most of them dealt with external situations instead of internal issues. The popular idea of happiness involves having the...

Before I started Saddleback church twenty-one years ago, I spent twelve weeks going door-to-door in our area trying to discover the answers to that important question. The answers I got were not at all what I expected or what I wanted to hear! But over the years, I...

In Nehemiah 4, it tells us that half way through the project of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, the people began to get tired, disillusioned, and discouraged. Fatigue at the halfway point is very common. So today, I'd like to share six things I remind myself...