I’m glad to offer a free devotional created by the students and for the students of McCleary Chapel Ministries at the University of Indianapolis. I hope that you too will enjoy taking the Lenten journey with them. I’m so proud of these students, their love for Jesus Christ, and their heart to share that love with others.

Here is the PDF download: UIndy Lenten Devotional 2017

A little about the creators of it: Christianna Lopez is our Chapel Steward of Devotion this year. She is the primary editor. Christianna is an evangelical student from Zionsville, IN, majoring in music. Our layout and graphic designer is Emma Hogsett; she is a marketing major from Goshen, IN, and is a United Methodist. The rest of the authors are Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Baptists, and lots of other kinds of Christians. They are studying a variety of fields at UIndy including Social Work, Art, Physical Therapy, Nursing, Education, Philosophy, Religion, and many others.

You can print and distribute as many copies as you would like. We ask that you not redistribute electronically (just point them to this site!) or use the text that belongs to these authors without attribution. Otherwise, we’d be thrilled if you share it far and wide.

In part 1 I explained some of the ministry reasons that I’m transferring my membership and ordination to the United Methodist Church. In this post I will explain some of the doctrinal reasons. Though I must admit that the primary reasons that I’m transferring have nothing to do with theology or ministry. [Read more…]

 Some decisions are simply more difficult than others. My decision to leave the Assemblies of God for the United Methodist Church seemed like one of the difficult ones for many years. But now that decision is remarkably easy. [Read more…]

My first guest post from my wife, Rev. Jenifer Stuelpe Gibbs!

A consistent topic has floated through my social media the last few days. The topic has been covered through cartoons, memes, jokes and even a Saturday Night Live (tv show) skit. Some are incredibly funny and made me giggle. All of them make light of difficult conversations which might arise when families gather during the holidays. Most joke about how to shut those conversations down, ignore them, or evade them so as to “survive” the holidays. The jokes are funny because they point to a deeper truth, which is that holidays aren’t always easy for everyone and relationships can be messy.
What struck me was this; every form of media commended not ever having the hard conversations. There are certainly times not to have the conversations. The truth is, not everything requires a conversation. But avoidance of hard conversations seems to be a trend and now the norm. We’ve all done it. [Read more…]

  
Lots of folks were talking about this play last night and again this morning. When looking with the all knowing eye of instant replay it’s obvious it never stood a chance. But they snapped the ball anyway. 

Here is the disaster:

Coach Pagano quickly took the responsibility for not communicating clearly enough what had to be done in various scenarios. Good leadership there. But how did they get there?

They took a chance. They lined up hoping that the oddity of it would fool New England’s special teams unit and it didn’t. If it had then they might have picked up the line to gain. It was worth the risk. Since it didn’t work at all, there are a few things to learn:

1. If we are good leaders, we’ve had decisions go at least that badly. Most leaders don’t have to think back that far to remember when they tried something that seemed good at all the time but exploded from the word “go.”  Risk is necessary for leadership. Have grace on yourself when it is a disaster. 
2. Everyone saw it was bad but the one making the decision. Even the quarterback knew this wasn’t going to work; he was surprised when the ball was snapped. The one person that had to make the decision (the wideout tasked with playing center) couldn’t see it or didn’t know what to do. Football is too fast to get much feedback. But if someone could have spoken into his helmet they could have alerted to the impending disaster. The people with a little distance may be able save you if you can listen to them. 
3. If a few things had gone different, we’d be talking about the genius of it. Coach Pagano explained that the play had two ways to catch New England in a penalty (offsides or 12 men/substitution penalties). It also could have been a three yard run if New England had only put two men on the ball. And the escape valve was a delay of game that wouldn’t cost the punting unit at all. The difference between success and failure is sometimes small. 
4. Preparation matters. Snapping the football wasn’t the only mistake. The entire line was in a wrong formation. However much this was practiced, it wasn’t practiced enough to keep the ball from being snapped in a clearly losing situation or to keep the line from missing the formation. In this case better preparation would certainly have made the difference between a decent attempt at trickery and the disaster we saw. 

Rarely do our mistakes get played out in HD with the entire field in clear view. What can you learn from the Colts disaster that will help you lead?

Should the spouse of a veteran pastor be ordained by virtue of their sharing in the ministry and leadership of their spouse’s congregation?

This post is for a very specific audience due to a rather odd circumstance of denominational legislation within the Assemblies of God. [Read more…]