I read recently in Relevant Magazine’s article on 7 Big Questions. In this article they asked 7 questions of Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Lauren Winner, Efrem Smith, Rick Warren. These are some big names in the evangelical world and its no surprise that everyone wants to know what they have to say. But, being a small church pastor myself, I am always interested in what the “no-namers” have to say. Men and women like my grandfather, who I consider one of the best pastors I have ever known, doesn’t get quite the voice that these people because he served in smaller communities. This is not their fault and its not his fault. It just is. I’m okay with that. I am...Read More →
Archive for May, 2008
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May 28, 2008
Ordinary People Answer 7 Big Questions
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May 22, 2008
Top 5 Books for the Back Table?
Steve McCoy asks a great question of his Southern Baptist Friends, “What 5 books would you recommend for a church’s book table?” So, i am stealing the idea for this post from him… Most of the answers there were in the Reformed circles. Some good titles there. But, I do wonder what top 5 books you would put on the back table of a church. Here are mine: A Walk Through the Bible – Lesslie Newbigin (a great, short, non-churchy summary of the bible) Proper Confidence – Lesslie Newbigin A Spirituality for the Road – David Bosch Jesus Creed - Scot McKnight Embracing Grace - Scot McKnight There are others I’d add to the list to round it out a bit, but those are the...Read More →
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May 21, 2008
3 Generations of Macs; Resurrecting my G3 iBook
I bought my first Mac in about 2002. It was a G3 iBook. It was a great machine. I loved it. Sure, it smelled like BO after about two years but it worked great. Then, the infamous logic board problem kicked in and eventually it was out of warranty and the recall wasn’t in effect anymore. I lost video somewhere around 2006 and the poor thing sat on the shelf for the last three years. I moved on to my favorite computer ever, my 12″ Powerbook G4. This thing was amazing, lightweight, small, fast and pretty dang cool looking. Apple lap tops have always been head turners and this one was no different. After I started doing more design work and the 12″ screen didn’t...Read More →
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May 21, 2008
Growing Generosity vs. Meeting the Budget
A friend and I were talking through some of the characteristics of The Well today and he made an observation that was very, very encouraging. He said to me, “I love The Well because our focus is on generosity vs. meeting the budget.” I think this is a big difference that is also very subtle. I think this is seen in my previous post on the stimulus checks and the church that asked for them. The issue here is that this church’s main goal is not to merely increase generosity. Their main goal is to meet their budget and get out of their deficit. It’s not that meeting their budget is contrary to growing generosity. I just don’t think the best way to grow the...Read More →
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May 20, 2008
Give Us Your Economic Stimulus Check?
Genuine question here: Would the following quote I found on a church website inspire you to give? Would you find this helpful? Offensive? Annoying? Just fine? Here’s an idea! Whether you normally tithe or regularly put a check in the offering plate or just put in whatever cash you can from your wallet when you are at church, why don’t you trying tithing on this unexpected gift from the government? If you give the first 10% to God, you will find that the rest of what you have to spend goes even further than you had hoped. You can’t out give God! We could clear our budget deficit if each one of us would tithe on our economic stimulus checks! And … there are those...Read More →
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May 19, 2008
Is the Bible “Missional?”
In about three weeks I head to Zambia. I’ll be spending two weeks there working with Pastor George Palo of Harvest City Church. I’ve known George for about a year now and I’m really excited to see his country and see in person all the people and stories that he’s shared. One of the things that is most exciting to me is George’s heart for mission. It was not too far into a recent conversation that I realized that he really understood and had a great grasp on the fact that the church is called for the sake of mission, for the sake of being a community that is a “sign witness and foretaste of the Kingdom of God.” (From Newbigin I think). He used...Read More →
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May 17, 2008
Free Lean and Clean WordPress Theme
I’ve decided to make the WordPress Theme I developed available for free. I’ve really benefited from so many free themes out there early on that I figured it would be kind to give something back to the WordPress Community. Read more about it here.
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May 15, 2008
Economic Stimulus or Missional Stimulus?
I read recently on Al Hsu’s blog this post about how our economy depends on us buying things that we don’t need. That’s sad. Really sad. As Al said in his post, “So what happens if people only buy what they actually need? The economy collapses, because it’s based on us all buying unnecessary stuff? So sad.” Now is about the time where many of us will be receiving our “Economic Stimulus Checks.” To me, this is such a strange thing. Now, I am fairly certain that this will work in some ways. There will likely be a lot of flat screen televisions, ipods, iphones and things like this purchased with this money. I guess that isn’t terrible. It’s kinda like finding a roll of...Read More →
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May 14, 2008
My “Lean and Clean” WordPress Theme Released
I have officially released my first WordPress theme called “Lean and Clean.” I’ve been developing in WordPress for over 4 years and early on I had the hardest time finding a good, solid and functioning wordpress theme to use on my blog. So, I set out to build a solid, clean, attractive, simple and professional looking theme for a mere $5. This theme is now FREE and you can get the info and read about it here… If you want to see it in its simplest form you can view it on the theme blog or you can view it as it was customized by fellow blogger Pat Loughery.
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May 13, 2008
Understanding Africa 6-11
Still reading through the book African Friends and Money Matters by David Maranz. This book goes through 90 general observations about African Life, especially in relation to money. Below are observations: 6, 7, 7W, 8, 9. (Here is 1-5) 6. The fact that most people are overextended financially produces profound effects on society. “Maranz writes, “The level of individual worry is very high. There are widespread anxieties over the basic food supply, employment, health in general and AIDS in particular, government instabilities, education for children or self, increase in thievery in many urban areas and others…” Some implications are: Friendships strained as they borrow from friends and can’t pay back. They aren’t in credit card debt but instead to their friends, they have the constant...Read More →
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May 13, 2008
A Church of Small Groups? Or Just Community?
I was reading an article on Christianity Today and came across my exact understanding of small groups laid out in a really simple few paragraphs: Okay, let’s all say it together: “We don’t want to be a church with small groups, but a church of small groups.” Everybody says it. Well, everybody but Mecklenburg. We have found that small groups are very much needed by those who need small groups. Read that sentence again slowly. The truth is that many do not need them, and may not be best served by them. We initially rebuffed this idea. Somehow it was sacrilegious to even verbalize the thought. In fact, small groups can become just as much a sacred cow to the contemporary church as Sunday school...Read More →
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May 12, 2008
Testing Out My New WordPress Theme
If you are looking at an orange and black theme, that means you are now looking at the WordPress theme I am developing for release to the public. I have it on here because I want to give it some good testing before I release it to others. If you see any issues, please let me know. The theme will work with widgets and will include an image file so you could add a custom header if you wanted. I’m pretty excited to release it as it will be the first one for me. So, here’s the question, I have put a TON of work into this thing and am strongly considering selling it for a mere $5, would you pay that for this theme?...Read More →
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May 12, 2008
Developing Missional Values, Programs, Budgets, Goals
I am continually trying to work out how to better think through and organize our community in a natural and semi-organic way so that we can best live out or mission and our values. I spend a lot of time thinking about this “organizing for mission” concept and as part of my thinking I brainstormed a generalized flow of thought for how we develop programs, ideas and even budgets. In fact, what you will see below came mostly from a conversation around budgets in our leadership team. We were working through some questions such as: What is a good use of the churches finances? What is a poor use of the churches finances, where do we prioritize our finances at the church? How do we...Read More →
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May 10, 2008
Does Disorganization Kill You?
No, not literally. I guess it could do that, if, like, you are so disorganized that you forget where you live and starve to death or something. But, I’ve come to realize recently that I am way too disorganized in my work habits, I waste too much time and I am not focused enough on my work (both design and church stuff). This was one of the big things that came out of my weekend away a few weeks back. Seems I am not the only one, Bob Hyatt, a pastor in Portland writes, “I’m coming to realize that, at least for me… and maybe for you… my disorganization is killing me. It’s very literally sapping all the ‘bundance out of my abundant life and...Read More →
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May 9, 2008
Missional in Suburbia Seminar in the Philly Suburbs – Time to Register
A few months ago I made an early announcement of a seminar we are hosting at The Well on the topic of the missional church in suburbia. We are honored to be able to bring in Al Hsu. Al is the author of the book, The Suburban Christian. I read this book last year and found it really, really helpful. Al not only gets the missional church stuff but also really gets the under the surface issues around the development of suburbia and the calleges that the church faces in this context. So, get off your over busy, suburban, individualized, consumer-driven butts and sign up for this seminar! The seminar is August 9, 2008 from 9am – 4pm. On Friday night the 8th we’ll be...Read More →
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May 9, 2008
Is my feed broken?
For all of you who read my blog from my RSS feed, can you do me a favor and click over and leave me a comment and let me know that you are getting my feed updates? I hear a nasty rumor that my feed is broken. If you don’t know what an RSS feed, don’t worry about it. I’ll explain it some other time. Now I’ve got to go get my youngest child from the grips of his big brother!
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May 9, 2008
Giving is Only as Strong as Your Mission…
From an article on The Ooze: Our house church has been thriving now for over 2 years and I can honestly say I’ve not once had to preach a sermon on tithing or giving, and yet our small gathering gave thousands of dollars to the help the poor in our community last year. In fact, we’re on track to double last year’s amount, and I’ve never had to beg or plead for our members to dig deep or give more. Why is this? What’s the big difference? The simple fact is that our people can tangibly connect every dollar and penny they give with how it directly assists people in need. We keep nothing for ourselves and give all of the money we receive away...Read More →
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May 8, 2008
African Friends and Money Matters: 1-5
As I stated recently, I am reading the book African Friends and Money Matters in preparation for my trip to Zambia. This book is broken up into 90 general observations about the differences between African and Western cultures. The author appropriately states that these are general observations and, like in any culture, there are exceptions to them. I am basically going to try and read about 5 of these observations every day or so until I leave. We’ll see how my plan goes. I’ve found these observations really, really fascinating. Here are the first five: The financial need that occurs first as the first claim on the available resources. Resources are to be used, not hoarded. Money is to be spent before friends or relatives...Read More →
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May 7, 2008
How do you Give up 7 homers to the Reds?
I interrupt this string of serious blog posts for something even more serious. My beloved Cubs have given up seven homers to the lowly Reds today. Just when we think things are on the up, this kind of thing happens. I pulled this image from the ESPN box score. We’re only in the 7th inning and this could go from terrible to horriffic… or, wait, I think we’re already at horriffic. Ugh. It’s so hard being a Cubs fan… But, don’t worry about me, I’m still convinced we’ll win it all this year… Just like every year.
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May 7, 2008
Four Missional Movements for the Suburban Church
At The Well, we’ve been studying the book of Acts. Its been a very, very formative and challenging book for us to work through. For me, there have been four ways that my life, and I think our life, has been challenged so far. Here are four movements that I’ve seen: From Individual to Communal As individuals we are important, very, very important. But we need to continually celebrate the individual but we must do it within the context of community. Our world is so individualized that we’ve lost a sense that there is something greater than ourselves. In our culture, this is a challenge because we are so good at isolating ourselves and disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world. Our priorities can...Read More →
