Aaron Armstrong's Blog, page 10

Brief reflections on life, work, and ministry

Today is my 44th birthday. And writing those words feels odd. There is nothing especially eventful about this, but it feels odd nonetheless. Perhaps it’s because it signals the end of my early 40s, and the onset of the middle portion of this particular decade. Maybe it’s realizing that Emily and I are on the cusp of the major life-changes that accompany the late 40s and early 50s.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m an unusually reflective and/or introspective mood as I write.

I don’t know that...

5 Traits of a Healthy Community Group Leader

The first time I led a community group, I was completely in over my head. I didn’t really know what I was doing. And I wasn’t alone in that. Most of the community group/small group leaders I know tend to feel that way—especially when they’re getting started. Unfortunately, that tends to be the default for a lot of us.

When it comes to much of ministry work, we’re flying by the seat of our pants. That is partly because we’re doing things involving people and people are inherently messy. Despi...

The difficult metaphor we still need

Imagine you’re trying to explain a really complex subject to a child. Maybe it’s how budgeting works or where babies come from, for example.. How would you do it? What’s the best way to give a clear answer without going over their head? While there are many ways to explain complex subjects, sometimes it’s best to use a good metaphor.

God’s many metaphors for God’s people (a quick refresher)

I shared in another article that the Bible uses several metaphors to describe God’s people—that is, ...

Music, silence, and rejecting cynicism

Generally speaking, I don’t consider myself to be a cynical person. But few things push me toward cynicism than the weird advice I hear and read offered to church leaders. For example, back in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I was at a leadership conference where a young-ish megachurch pastor on stage. He was strutting around with the bravado of a stand-up comic as he described the ways he tried to help create the atmosphere of the worship gathering: The way lighting created a feeling in the room...

What is the church? Many metaphors, one reality

As a new believer, I read everything I could get my hands on to help me understand my new faith. Prayer and evangelism. Suffering, salvation, and grace. The nature of Scripture. (And I even read Scripture too!) But I hit a wall when I reached one specific topic: the church.

The issue wasn’t a lack of material. I had plenty to read. The problem was much seemed as confused as I was. Most focused on deconstructing what church is or should be. “Incarnational,” “organic,” authentic,” and “mission...

Pastor, Jesus is Enough (Book Review)

There’s a common theme in Christian ministry right now: a lot of people, both in vocational and volunteer ministry are discouraged and weary. The upheaval we’ve seen in the last several years has many contemplating quitting altogether. What do they need to know to keep going—to recapture their sense of purpose and hope in what God has called them to do?

They need to set their eyes on Jesus as their only hope. To see him as enough for any and every storm. And that’s what they will find as the...

We are not as free as we were meant to be (but we can be)

As a new Christian, I had this impression that John’s Gospel the encouraging book. If you needed to share some good news, this was the book to do it with. This, I think, was due to hearing so many other Christians recommend it as the book to read with a non-Christian.1

Then I read it and began to realize how right and wrong I was.

Years later, in teaching through it with the pastors at my church, I’ve gained an even greater appreciation of that rightness and wrongness.

John’s Gospel i...

Living in Light of the Second Coming of Jesus

I love a good science fiction story. And if you’ve read enough of them, you will notice that most are built around two concepts—two visions of the future.

The first is the dystopian nightmare. These are what you find in books and movies like The Hunger Games, The Handmaid’s Tale, or the timeline where Biff Tannen has taken over Hill Valley in Back to the Future Part II. And in some of the best—and the worst—examples, these visions warn against our own worst tendencies. They’re an opportunity...

How do you disagree like a Christian?

As a society, we’re really bad at disagreeing with one another. Actually, that’s not true. We’re great at disagreeing with one another. We’re awful—abysmal—at doing so constructively. Rarely do we engage in civil discourse around different view points, policies, and, yes, agendas. Instead, we opt for defamation, as we see so often on Twitter and cable news.

I wish I could say that Christians were standing above the fray in this. But we aren’t. If anything, we’re even worse. No matter where we...

Jesus knows his disciples (or why we don’t need to be cynical)

One of the things that I love about John’s gospel is this repeated refrain: Jesus knows who are his. Jesus knows our hearts better than we do. And because he knows our hearts, he knows who and what we love. He knows who are his people and who are not.

I was reminded of this again as I taught through John 6:59-71 at my church. This passage serves as the climax of a massive confrontation between Jesus, the Jewish religious leaders, and even those who claimed to be his disciples. People followe...