growth – Rodney Knous

Confronting What We Tolerate: Lessons from the Church of Thyatira

rodney — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 19:05:42 +0000

The church of Thyatira presents us with a challenging question: Have you ever been afraid to speak the truth because you didn’t want to hurt someone you love? Or have you hesitated to confront something that doesn’t feel right because you don’t want to be “that person” – the one stirring the pot, ruining the …

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Standing Firm in a Compromising World: Lessons from Pergamum

rodney — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 19:04:29 +0000

Have you ever felt that holding onto your convictions has made you the odd one out? Perhaps you’ve walked into a room and thought, “I believe differently, and I’m afraid that if I speak up, it’s going to cost me something.” Maybe it was at work when your team wanted to go in a direction …

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Finding Faith in the Fire: How to Stay Faithful When Life Gets Hard

rodney — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 19:02:59 +0000

What do you do when doing the right thing doesn’t make your life better, but worse? What happens when you trust God and things get harder? When you choose integrity and lose influence? When you stay faithful and still get hurt? Most of us have been there, but we don’t always talk about it. We’ve …

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Two Questions for Churches

rodney — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 15:09:03 +0000

There’s a movie from 1999 called “Blast from the Past” starring Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone that is a good illustration of this question. Fraser plays a man named Adam Webber who was born and raised in a bomb shelter. His mad-scientist of a father locked them in because he thought there was a nuclear …

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Can Churches Have Quality and Quantity?

rodney — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 19:33:42 +0000

In our current context, the small churches outnumber the large churches in a ratio of about 60 to 1. You can imagine how heated the discussions get in the community when a larger church’s motives are questioned in regards to their latest event, the style of worship, or the content of the sermon. The smaller …

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