The Top Ten

Pursuing Glory has existed for almost nine years. That’s a long time in blog years! Over the years, it’s been a personal journal, a way to stay in touch with friends and contacts, a place for my random thoughts, a place where I’ve processed what the Lord has been doing with me, and more recently, a place to begin to equip the church for the changes that are coming to the Earth. During that time, a few posts have struck a chord with folks and I wanted to highlight them here. If you’re new to the blog, these will give you some idea of what to expect.

The Benefits of Discipleship The fact that this post, of all the others, is the most popular post I have, surprises me.  People are regularly searching for “the benefits of discipleship” or “the benefits of being a disciple of Jesus.” They end up here. This post also has the distinction of drawing the most international traffic. There is a cost of discipleship, which we must talk about, but only those who understand the benefits of discipleship will accept the cost. If you’ve been struggling with counting the cost, read this post and count the benefits, it may make the cost of following Jesus easier to accept.

Five Thoughts on the Five Fold Ministry If you stick around this site for long, you’ll know I’m a big believer in the full functioning of all the ministry gifts listed in Ephesians 4. This post was a round up of a few helpful posts by others about how those giftings function in the body.  Because the idea of all these gifts operating together is still rare, this post has gathered some good traffic.

On Sonship One of the crucial ideas of Christianity is that we are God’s sons and daughters. But many Christians struggle with the reality of being God’s children even though they believe the idea is true. This post is the beginning of my manifesto on sonship. If you like the first post, make sure to come back and check out the follow up posts here.

One Size Does Not Fit All:Why We Have Different Sizes of Meetings Over the last several years of planting house churches I have discovered that life together requires more than just a group of 10-12 people in a living room. In this post I look at why we meet together in multiple ways and how that has helped us grow.  If you are or have been part of a house church before, you may find this article helpful.

Redefining Spirituality: Seven Benchmarks of a Discipling Culture Neil Cole, founder of CMA Resources has a saying: “We need to lower the bar on what it means to be a church and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple.” This post looks at what that looks like in the life of a believer. How do we define the basic things that every believer needs to know in order to be a high-quality disciple, without requiring him to be a seminary graduate.  The answer may surprise you.

Discerning the Movement of the Spirit I love this post simply because in it I warn people that “I’m the charismatic they warn you about in Cessationist circles.” But beyond my witty writing, I think this post resonates with people because we in the West struggle with discerning whether something is the Holy Spirit or not. We judge spiritual events based on whether they make us comfortable or not, not whether they make us like Jesus.  If you’ve ever struggled with discerning if something is from the Holy Spirit, this post may be helpful.

Inspired by the Jesus Manifesto, Napoleon on Jesus I wrote this post while I was listening to Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola’s “Jesus Manifesto” in audio book format. The book reminded me of something I had read years earlier written by Napolean about who Jesus was to him.  His answer to who Jesus was may surprise and inspire you.

Kingdom Investment and Apostolic Travel This post was my first attempt at video blogging.  The folks at ApostleFarm had asked me to elaborate more about the reality of apostles traveling long distances at their own expense to raise up disciples. In this video I describe what I’ve learned traveling with apostolic men in Africa as they go from city to city and why the way they travel is different than the way we typically think of travel. If you’re interested in apostolic ministry you’ll want to check it out.

Review: Viral Jesus by Ross Rodhe One of the fun things I got to do on the blog is offer some free press to Ross Rodhe.  Ross is an organic church planter in California with a rich history of following Jesus as Lord of the harvest. Anyone who has read Ross’s book or his blog knows the encouragement he is in pursuing organic churches born out of the harvest. But if you haven’t read these or are just interested in these topics, this is a good place to start.

Two Questions That End Confusion This was a really simple blog post that originated from a meeting I was at several years ago. The speaker challenged each of those present to answer the two questions and live life in light of what they revealed. If you’re hazy on your life’s purpose, this passage may be helpful for you.