By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Executive Director One of the biggest challenges we have at the Yeshua Institute is convincing people that everyone is a leader. “I’m sure your program is a great one, but it’s not for me.” “Why not?” we ask. “Because I’m not a leader,” comes the reply. We hear that all the time – and we always hear it from people who are, in fact, leaders. We hear it from parents. We hear it from teachers. We hear it from workers on the line. We hear it from retired folks. We hear it from stay-at-home moms. “I’m not a leader....

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In a homily Jan. 10, Pope Francis offered two practical tips for how we can track whether or not we are living Jesus’ admonition to love our neighbor. His remarks were prompted by the day’s first reading, 1 John 4:20: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar.” The pope said it’s important to challenge ourselves to love others because the devil is defeated by Christians loving their brothers and sisters. So how do we know whether we are loving or hating our neighbor? Pope Francis said the first test is to ask: “Do I pray for people?”...

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By Owen Phelps, Ph.D. Director, Yeshua Institute “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” Ephesians 4:23-24 It’s still early enough in the New Year that maybe we haven’t abandoned all of our New Year’s Resolutions -- and perhaps we are still trying to chart our way through 2019. Thus, it’s a good time of the year to turn ourselves over to a little introspection. What does life mean? What does my life mean? What is my purpose in life? More immediately, what is my purpose in 2019? In...

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Almost lost between the feasts of Christmas and New Year is a Sunday with special meaning to Catholics. It’s the Feast of the Holy Family. “I confess,” says Dr. Owen Phelps, Director of the Yeshua Institute, “that in all my years of growing up as the oldest of 10 children in a devout Catholic family, I never noticed that.” Today he looks forward to it as a great way to be reminded, as a New Year dawns, on what’s most important in the life of a parent – any parent. “Your roles as spouse and parent have to come first, before all other aspirations,” Phelps says. &...

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Most change slips past us virtually unnoticed. It’s only when we stumble across a huge change, often showing up as a crisis – or we look back on a period of several years and realize the earth has moved plenty under our feet. But as Bob Dylan proclaimed so many years ago, “The times they are a changing.” Yes, they are always changing, no matter how imperceptible that change may be. With most of the new year still ahead of us, Al Lopus, head of the Best Christian Workplaces Institute, focuses on the changes that will serve as major trends in the workplace in 2019. He outlines seven maj...

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