Elder Leadership: Priorities for Thriving Communities
By Barbara Moon Elders look after their community. Elders are in the stage of life where strength is lessening while responsibility is increasing. Communities usually contain different age groups and can be of different sizes. It’s a good thing that elders have had lots of practice throughout all the other stages of maturity. Communities can […]
Becoming an Extra Parent
By Dr. Karen Struble, Clinical Psychologist In recent years the number of Western-world households without children has risen tremendously. Reasons abound. Some folks search for a suitable (a.k.a. real grown-up) mate, but cannot find one. Others suffer the pain of infertility or other medical conditions. Still others are fertile couples who choose not to bear […]
Flexible Diligence & Parenting
By Michael Sullivant One of the skills we are meant to learn during the parent stage of maturity is to gracefully balance and synchronize our attention and energies to meet the appropriate needs of our spouse, children, extended family, church, work, friends, and the broader community. I’m now almost 70 with five married adult children […]
Child Maturity – Learning What Truly Satisfies
By Michel Hendricks Have you ever been hungry, and intended to eat a little snack before dinner and ended up eating way too much and ruining your appetite? Have you ever gotten so obsessed by a sport or hobby that you ignored other important things? Have you ever been hooked on a substance or behavior […]
Beyond Comfort – How Difficult Tasks Fuel Growth
By Michael Sullivant One of the outstanding tasks required to achieve full “childhood” maturity (age 4-14) – according to Dr. Wilder’s 20+ years of research across the centuries and cultures – is to learn to do hard things that might even cause some pain. Generally, this was a big gap in my childhood development. I […]
Inside Out 2 – Pernicious Anxiety
By Michel Hendricks In my previous article on the movie, Inside Out 2, we looked at the brain reconstruction that happens when we transition from child to adult around age 14. One of the consequences we see in Riley is the introduction and almost overwhelming dominance anxiety in Riley’s life. Anxiety is a new emotion […]
Inside Out 2 – The Great Rewiring
In the original popular movie, “Inside Out,” we meet Riley, a pre-teen girl struggling with the sadness of leaving her hometown and friends behind as she moves to San Francisco. We see the interplay of Joy with more negative emotions, including Sadness and Anger, and learn the centrality of joy in handling negative emotions. “Inside […]
Relational Brain Skills & the Life Model
By Monica Mouer I was introduced to the Life Model in the fall of 2014. As a mental health counselor and pastor’s wife at that time, I had been on a multi-year journey for my personal spiritual and emotional growth. When I came across the Life Model, I knew it was something special. The blend […]
Is Your Community Doing Discipleship? Pt . 2
In last week’s blog we talked about how community relates to discipleship. This week I want to look more closely at exactly how Jessie Cruickshank explains the process of growth-oriented discipleship in her book Ordinary Discipleship. Jessie uses the process of the hero’s journey as an outline for discipleship. The hero’s journey is a 7-step […]
Your Best Self Asks for Help
If you have been around the Life Model for a while, you have probably come across the maturity charts. One aspect of child level maturity is learning to ask for what you need. Just that idea alone brings up all types of different reactions in each of us. Everyone has different thoughts, questions, arguments, fears […]
Hosting Your Best Self
Several years ago in college, I had the privilege of reading Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines. That book, among other of his works, impacted me deeply. One of Willard’s explanations that caught me was his view on the spiritual quality of hospitality. The spiritual gift of hospitality is commonly described as hosting someone in your […]
The Origins of the False Self
At Life Model Works, we ask a lot of “how” questions. Often in churches, we are told what the Bible teaches, but too often we are not taught how to pull it off in real life. How do we love the people around us like Jesus loves them? How do we love the difficult people in our lives, […]
Immanuel & Grief
By Mercy Johnson It happens to each of us at some point, that internal longing for someone who is gone. One of the sorrows of our sinful and broken world is relational disconnection through death, unhealthy relationships, or other causes. Within Life Model-based training, we refer to this as attachment pain. Unresolved attachment pain causes […]
Escaping Enemy Mode Together
It will be exciting to see many of you in Denver this month. We are going to experience joy and learn to stay connected to Jesus and to our people, even when we are in enemy mode. We are going to share stories from the field and hear how it is going. How is escaping […]
Recordings that Reach & the Translator’s Journal
This blog is sponsored by the special donations made to help Life Model Works share the love and peace of Jesus with people in Ukraine! Thank you to all who contributed to the Ukraine trip for LMW. We were able to teach passing the peace in the middle of a war. Our team was active […]
Testimonies from Friends in Kiev
This blog is sponsored by the special donations made to help Life Model Works share the love and peace of Jesus with people in Ukraine! Thank you to all who contributed to the Ukraine trip for LMW. We were able to teach passing the peace in the middle of a war. Our team was active […]
Resources for Creating Transformational Small Groups
(Part 10 of 10 from the article, “Through the Eyes of Heaven: Does ‘Talking It Through to Find Peace’ bring Shalom?”) By Jim Wilder and Ed Khouri Having explained the practices, pitfalls, and perils of talking things through to find “peace,” let’s turn our attention to resources that can help. These materials encourage the development […]
Finding Identity and Transformation by Seeking Things Above
(Part 9 of 10 from the article, “Through the Eyes of Heaven: Does ‘Talking It Through to Find Peace’ bring Shalom?”) By Jim Wilder and Ed Khouri Followers of Jesus are in the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus. We are born into an entirely new identity from the moment we receive […]
Grace as a Foundation for Peace in Your Small Group
(Part 8 of 10 from the article, “Through the Eyes of Heaven: Does ‘Talking It Through to Find Peace’ bring Shalom?”) By Jim Wilder and Ed Khouri The word grace was around for hundreds of years before Paul used it in his epistles. Grace is a relational term that implies an ongoing, mutual connection between […]
Breaking Through the Fog
(Part 7 of 10 from the article, “Through the Eyes of Heaven: Does ‘Talking It Through to Find Peace’ bring Shalom?”) By Jim Wilder and Ed Khouri Looking back over the previous blogs, it is clear we have been misapplying what the Bible says. In a sense, we have been creating fog around the topic. […]