David serves in many arenas. He works as a leadership development coach in the corporate world and is helping plant Kairos Church in Ooltewah, Tennessee. He and his wife Amy are both working on their first books. You can read more about their adventures on his personal blog at Going Without Knowing.
La vida traerá dificultades inesperadas y, en algún momento, te encontrarás con una capacidad disminuida. El diseño de Dios era que sus hijos no estuvieran solos; este diseño se extiende a lo largo de todas las páginas de las Escrituras.…
Life will bring unexpected hardship and, at some point, you will find yourself with diminished capacity. God’s design was that his children wouldn’t be alone—this design is spread all over the pages of scripture. For those called to the…
“Dad, why do we have to do this? Why can’t we just sit inside the house?” My son was only eight years old at the time these words were uttered, and he didn’t want to meet new people on…
Being faithful isn’t a daily grind we have to strategize. “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.” John 5:20 This text is one of the most compelling parts of scripture. It’s…
“Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion… to his summons and service.” —Os Guinness, The Call In…
If you’re a leader reading this, be encouraged: your mission is to teach people to be content with waiting on the Lord. “For consider your calling, brothers; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many…
This is a guest post by Brian Ottinger. Brian is a pastor and planter of a new missional community church in Charlotte, NC called Convergence Church. The Lord saved Brian in a radical way over seven years ago. God…
My name is Marshall Benbow, and I am the discipleship pastor at Grace Community Church in Greensboro, NC. We are a church of about 500 in a Bible Belt city of about 250,000 people. Over the years through the…
Getting the church to be what it was meant to be—a family on mission—doesn’t happen only through teaching and talking. People already have enough information; they need application. One of the first ministry opportunities I ever had was to lead…
This is a guest post by Aaron Kampman. As a former NFL athlete, Aaron has a lot of experience with coaching and its benefits. From high school through the professional ranks, he has had a number of coaches in…
This is a guest post by Brian Mease. Brian is a husband and father of three, has been in Pastoral Ministry for over 15 years. As a graduate of Liberty University and a seminary dropout, his truest ministry passion…
This is a guest post by Johnathan Schroeder. Johnathan is husband to Jill and the father of Judah (7) and Jessah (2). In 1995 God began a work in Johnathan, God showed Johnathan his useless pursuit of acceptance and…
This is a guest post by Nick Crawford. Nick serves as the Family & Groups Pastor at Fondren Church in Jackson, Mississippi, where he works to see disciples made, matured, and multiplied across all generations. Nick came to Jackson from…
When Jesus's commissions are read together, we get a more accurate picture of a King who cares for the broken. If our strategies don’t include the care and healing of the whole man, we’ve missed the real commission. Discipleship is about more than beliefs and practices, it’s the process of…
This is why the answer to helping others reach maturity isn’t more training, but more shared life. It’s in the sharing that we offer up our lives as Jesus offered up His life for us. What if the key…
Apart from God’s miraculous intervention, my teaching will only go so far. Our methods alone are dead ends. We’ve got to pray for this power. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine…
Scripture shows consistently that when God calls someone, he sends them to the wilderness. If it’s an important enough category for God, then we need one too. Moses, Israel, David, Elijah, the Apostle Paul, even Jesus all were sent…
Leaders, please set aside your objective plans for a moment. Helping people address their inner lives is probably the most important thing you’ll ever do. Many years ago I took my first trip to West Africa. On one of…
We’re excited to share a resource that’s been many years in the making. But, How Do We Do It? comes as a result of many years of consulting with churches looking to be faithful to their mandate to make disciples…
The bi-line of this blog states that this post was written by me, David Achata. Really it's a collective piece my wife, Amy, and I wrote together. I'm amending the bio for this post to read officially, "Written by David and Amy Achata."…
Restlessness is an indicator that something’s gotten out of whack. (Part three in the Everyday Sabbath Rest series from David Achata.) About 1,600 years ago, Augustine of Hippo prayed to God, saying, “You have made us for yourself, and our…
(Part two in the Everyday Sabbath Rest series from David Achata.) The Holy Spirit grows people so they can work from a rested place. We’re prone to unbelief. Doubting God is in charge and that He’ll care for the needs of…
A non-rested person has little capacity to live in Christ’s way. Like the first disciples, what many of us need is for Jesus to stand and still the storm (Mark 4:35–41). And like those first disciples, standing in awe of who…
Whether you’re a student, a stay-at-home mom, or a white-collar executive, most of your life is spent working. Whatever your work, this means your Christian identity is almost always being formed under unideal and inconvenient circumstances. In times past,…
Where are the dry places that need life? Habakkuk 2:14 tells us a day is coming when the knowledge of the Glory of the Lord will fill the earth like the water covers the sea. Recently I woke early…
(You can read the next part in the How Do We Do It series here.) Life is the program, and everyday is the mission. At one of the recent Saturate Every Day events, Jeff Vanderstelt and I were answering…
(Enjoy this first blog in a new series called Redeemed Work by David Achata. You can read part two here.) God changes our identity so our work is no longer about personal advancement. Recently I sat in a hotel bar with a…
Prayerful Planning for the Extrovert (and Introvert)
In the world of missional communities and church-planting, there’s a real misconception that to be effective you’ve got to be blowing the doors off your house every week. I wasn’t born a planner, but out of necessity I’ve gotten…
Life has rhythms. Learning to go with these rhythms was how Jesus organized His life. Jesus criticized His opponents in this area once by saying, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you…
(You can read the next part in the How Do We Do It series here.) The problem is that most people aren’t asking, not to mention listening. When I became a part of the Soma Family of Churches, I…
Have you ever had to make a weighty decision on your own? It can be agonizing, wondering if you are going about it in the right way or not. Unfortunately, this is how most people make decisions in our…
Think back to some of your most powerful times of growth. Maybe a friend or mentor challenged something you said by asking, “how can that be true?” Maybe a spouse confronted you by saying, “tell me more about what…
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