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Legion vs. the Lord: Christ’s Authority Over Unseen Evil

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by Bart Denny Whether you are a professional mechanic or a shade-tree tinkerer, you have probably met that bolt. You know the one. You start with a regular wrench. No movement. You grab a longer handle. Your knuckles get scraped, your patience wears thin, and if you are honest, your vocabulary gets “creative.” So you reach for the Liquid Wrench. Then the torch. Then the breaker bar. Still nothing. Finally, you call the neighbor with the impact wrench. Same bolt, same rust, same stuck threads. One burst from the impact, and what resisted you for an hour breaks loose in a second. The difference was not you trying harder. The difference was authority . A different kind of power was applied. A lot of life feels like that bolt. Maybe it is an addiction, anger, bitterness, lust, or unforgiveness that will not budge. Maybe your “stuck bolt” is more internal: anxiety that will not let go, depression that will not lift, bitterness that has hardened into a way of life. The Bible c...

Leadership Development in Local Church Revitalization: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for Further Research

by Bart L. Denny This article identifies a gap in the existing literature concerning leadership development in the context of local church revitalization. The article further suggests how existing leadership and leadership development theories could be applied to church revitalization and proposes further investigation and research areas. Observers and practitioners in the field of church revitalization unequivocally make the case that for a local church to reverse its decline, the pastor must develop a new generation of leaders (Clifton, 2016; Davis, 2017; Henard, 2021; Rainer, 2020; Stetzer & Dodson, 2021). The extant literature links the decline of churches to a lack of leadership and identifies renewed leadership as a vital component of church revitalization. However, little has been written, theoretically or practically, about the process of leadership development as it applies to local church revitalization. Moreover, little empirical verification supports church revitalizat...