Mustard Seed Associates invited me to write an article around the topic of Suburbia and the Missional church. Over the last few months I have started to realize that I needed to take a more positive approach to this topic. This article details a little bit of this shift. You can read the article on the MSA website here.
Archive for March, 2009
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March 31, 2009
Rethinking the Evils of Suburbia
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March 31, 2009
Mustard Seed Associates Sampler on Suburban Missional Church
Mustard Seed Associates just published a series of excellent resources in their April 2009 “Seed Sampler” on the topics of the Suburban and the Rural Missional Church. This is an excellent collection of articles around these two topics. See the entire Sampler here. I am honored to have an article in this sampler that I wrote entitled, “Rethinking the Evils of Suburbia.” This article shares a subtle, but I believe important, shift in my thinking around this topic. I would love to hear your feedback. There are also a number of other excellent articles in the sampler that I have yet to dig into but I am looking forward to reading them. Happy reading!
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March 25, 2009
Church, Where is Your Money Going?
Letting this quote from Brennan Manning sink in a bit today, “To me, the lack of credibility of the Christian church in America is that we are not professional lovers of God and people. We’ve got this carrying of the Bibles, saying “Praise Jesus!” and we don’t love one another. We don’t reach out and extend ourselves. Tell me the amount of money in your local church that is devoted to, first, the quality of faith of the people and, second, the assistance of the poor. Tell me those two things and I will tell you what I think of your church” Preach in Brennan! Our leadership team is in the midst of asking some important questions around these very two important issues. It’s my guess that most...Read More →
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March 24, 2009
Three Questions that Become Answers (2)
I’m working through three questions from Dave Gibbons from the book the Monkey and the Fish (I posted question #1 on Sunday night) “What is my pain” is the second question that Gibbons suggests that we ask as we seek direction for our lives and for our church. He writes about how some of the most important moments in our lives come through pain. The easiest example is that of Jesus. Salvation came through brutal death on the cross. Our world of comfort however, seems to not like or value pain so much and we would do well to consider it more carefully. He writes, “I think South American and Easter countries can help us with our theology and lifestyle. They not only think of resurrection day...Read More →
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March 23, 2009
Pastor, How Do You Spend Your Week?
We’re interacting with Ken Callahan’s book, “Effective Church Leadership” here. I’ve done him the favor of re-titling it Organizational Leadership for Missional Churches without asking him. He’s talks a bit about re-imagining the way pastors spend their time. In a churched culture, we were taught that most of our time could be spent studying, parsing verbs and keeping track of the inside workings of the church. he writes, ” [In interviews of pastors I learn that] The initial locus and primary focus of their work is in their offices. TIme-management studies again and again have confirmed that pastors invest a large percentage of their time in their offices – in meetings, in doing administrative work, and in taking care of administrative details… I am not...Read More →
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March 21, 2009
Three Questions that Become Answers (1)
Been really enjoying the book The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons. It’s one of those books that I will pass on to a few people and simply say “see, this is what I’ve been trying to talk about.” In chapter 5 he goes through three questions that are helpful for pastors and leaders (and churches) to ask as they look for answers to the mission and vision of their church. The first question is: “Where is Nazarath?” Now, this might seem like a strange question (it did to me at first). But when you begin to answer it, its very insightful. In the Bible, the question is asked about Jesus, “Can anything good come from Nazarath?” Dave gives another way of asking this...Read More →
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March 20, 2009
Social Networking for Dummies (Advanced Version)
So over Christmas this past year I spent some time trying to explain to my family how I spend use the different social networking websites out there. It took some time but I finally resorted to drawing it out on a napkin so it made some sense. While I participate in an number of different sites, I don’t actaully spend much time on all of them. Through interconnecting some of these different things I am able to spend most of my time in one or two places while still participating in the others. Here’s a rundown of the map… Twitter feeds my blog with my most recent update in the upper right hand corner. Twitter sends my most recent update to Facebook’s status line...Read More →
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March 19, 2009
Missional Organizational Leadership
Over the last few weeks during my travels I’ve been devouring the book, Effective Church Leadership by Ken Callahan. Now, in the circles of pastors that I run, this isn’t typically on the top of anyone’s reading list. But, it should be. I’ve come to the conclusion that this book needs to be reedited and reprinted and retitled as: Organizational Leadership for Missional Churches” (I’m convinced this book is so important and helpful I am in the midst of seeking to convince the author to do just that). Dr. Callahan is able to do something that is, unfortunately, rare. He’s able to give helpful organizational leadership principles, guidance and advice to churches and pastors who are trying to understand how to lead communities of faith in our...Read More →
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March 16, 2009
A New Blog Design
This weekend on the airplane I got inspired to give my blog a bit of a makeover. I stuck with the same colors and even the same background but really tried to simplify things a bit. I am also writing some longer articles more often so I made a place to highlight those. I still have some work to do on the sub pages and the sidebars but I figured I would toss it up now and that would inspire me to actually get it done faster and that way you could see the work in progress. Let me know what you think and what you find that might be broken still.
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March 10, 2009
God of the Moon and Stars
Eddie Gibbs introduced us to this amazing song and video at the Ecclesia conference. Its written by a dutch singer and I am not sure if his name. But, its a really moving video.
