Excellence—it’s important in any area, and it’s vital in leadership, particularly spiritual leadership. The quality of a work is unlikely to rise above the quality of the leader. This is why—when it comes to local church ministry—spiritual leaders must maintain a quest for personal excellence.

Another great purpose in having hospitality is to bond your new converts or people who are new to your church with other Christians. Help them to make friends. We try to have new people over at the same time we have “old” members over.

When God guides a visitor to your class, He is entrusting you with a very precious gift. He is giving you the responsibility to follow up and care for this person’s interest in growth. Making follow up visits is key to encouraging growth!

Clouds do not extinguish the light of the sun; they simply cover it temporarily. No matter how dark it gets, beyond the clouds we find the sun unchanged in its radiance and warmth. Spiritually speaking, God allows the clouds of sickness and sorrow to roll into our lives. Our days become long and dark. Our spirits sink low. Our faith begins to waver.

After preaching in a foreign country, a ministry friend took my wife and me to a remote hotel “resort” in Central America for a night and day of rest before we would travel home. After a frightful journey on deteriorating roads, we arrived for our time of refreshment.

Chapters 13 through 17 make up a very significant portion of the book of John. It is the section of the book that is devoted to a record of the talk Jesus gave to His apostles the night before He died. Five chapters out of twenty-one make it a sizable and significant section of the book! However the subject of the discourse is the primary factor that gives it its importance.

A man pastors a church which is part of a Baptist Association. He involves himself in this organization until one day, he realizes that he has had an inappropriate motivation: a desire to become the president of the group. He also becomes increasingly aware of things in the organization he believes are wrong.

If you are a father with children at home, you are a blessed man. It seems just yesterday that I snapped the picture above. In reality, it was twenty years ago. When it comes to parenting, time flies. And I don’t regret a second of that fleeting time that I invested in my children.

Let’s do an acrostic with the word purpose. We are all busy, right? Our hospitality should be profitable and have a purpose. So P stands for:

The Apostle Paul wrote about dealing with great adversity in 2 Corinthians 1. In verse 8, he made this statement about his trouble, “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life.”