Jim Putman

I (Bobby) recall being part of a meeting where national church leaders discussed/debated the essential definition of church (the subject of “minimum ecclesiology”). After all, if we are going to plant churches together, then we need to have a shared definition of a church. One of the leaders stated that there should be little discussion […]

I am the lead pastor/minister of a church in Post Falls, Idaho, but many people who know me have heard about my past in wrestling. At the collegiate level, I wrestled in national championships. They also know I was an unbeliever who took my skills learned in wrestling to the streets. Unfortunately, fighting was a […]

“I don’t want to be a legalist, but . . .” I heard that phrase in a life group once. Someone’s teenage son wanted his girlfriend to be able to spend the night. The parent was against it for moral reasons, but didn’t want to come across as legalistic. “I don’t want to be a […]

At its three-year mark, Real Life Ministries enjoyed what other church plants achieved only in their loftiest dreams: a brand-new 25,000-square-foot building and 2,300 people. And yet…   We were overwhelmed. The largest church any of us had ever been in was three hundred. None of us had ever done what we were doing. I […]

Most pastors in the US long to teach to a huge crowd of excited people on Sunday mornings: people packed into pews, pens and notebooks in hand, waiting for a download of all kinds of top-rated, inspiring information from the Bible. But this kind of learning environment is exactly what a good schoolteacher would hate: […]