Do you yearn for more edifying Christian conversation? Do you get tired of all the empty chatter and harsh comments on Facebook? Are you curious what pastors talk about when they get together? Do you wish you had a safe space where you could ask doctrinal questions, share what God is teaching you, or pose a practical ministry question? Well, my prayer is that this blog may help move us in that direction.

Last fall, I launched a discussion board on Google Groups for a small group of leaders and former ministry partners and interns. We had some great dialogue, but the conversation was abruptly cut off when I was asked to join the ministry at Immanuel, and had to shift my undivided attention to discerning the will of God, relocating my family, and acclimating to a new role. You can read more about that decision in my blog post, “Big Changes.”

Now that things have settled a bit, I’d love to resume these conversations with my brothers in Christ, and perhaps open it up to others. But instead of doing it through a private discussion board, I’d like to try and incorporate it right here into my blog. I have written a number of blog posts over the years and will keep all that content on this page. But moving forward, I’m going to shift the direction of my blog a bit and try to encourage more conversation and community. This is represented in a change to my blog tagline. Instead of “Thoughts on Life and Leadership by Stephen Jones” (which treated this more as a journal and ministry portfolio), I have reworded the tagline, “Christian Conversations on Life and Leadership.”

What’s the point? My hope is that this blog will become a digital space for Christian leaders to meet, discuss ideas, and encourage one another. I think the blogosphere still has a lot of untapped potential to promote leadership and thoughtful dialogue. Here are a few specific things I hope to accomplish through this blog:

• To Connect. Pastors and church leaders need a place to connect. We’re all busy and on the go. Finding time to connect is vital to a healthy, sustainable ministry, and is often put on the backburner. This will hopefully be a forum where healthy dialogue and encouragement can take place.
• To Converse. Conversations sharpen ideas. It’s good for us to read, think, write, listen, and dialogue together. It will help us personally, and it will help us in our ministries. I expect our discussions here to remain respectful and edifying, and would ask you to treat others as you would want to be treated.
• To Collaborate. This is a place where we can share ideas, resources, and praise reports with one another. If something has helped you, perhaps it can help someone else as well. I have been blessed to serve in several healthy church ministries over the years, and will try to share ideas from various ministry models that may help others. I look forward to what you have to share also!
• To Coach. I hope to eventually make this blog a place where I can send pastoral interns and ministry leaders to hear questions, discuss case studies, and train others to think biblically and respond Christianly to real-life pastoral issues.

So, with all of that in mind, please subscribe to this blog through the link in the top-left corner. Or alternatively, you can bookmark this page or even subscribe through an RSS feed reader like Feedly.

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