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 →
Category: The Church
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May 22, 2008
Top 5 Books for the Back Table?
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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 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
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 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 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 →
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May 6, 2008
Personal Financial Accountability In the Church, A Way Forward
For the first three years of our marriage my wife and I didn’t have any outstanding credit card debt. Then the crap hit the fan. Between some unnecessary purchases, not making enough money, hospital bills, and a string of car repairs, we amassed ourselves some significant credit card debt. Over the last two years we’ve been trying to be more conscious of how we spend and how we save. We’re finally starting to show some signs of progress. Of course, our adoption set us back this past year and we’re in the midst of paying that down. But the good news is that this week we finally paid off my outstanding seminary bill and due to the kindness of some friend we made some significant...Read More →
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May 5, 2008
The Consuming Christian and the Consuming Church
I was thinking Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church. I do that sometimes… think, that is. Anyways, we’ve had a number of new people visiting our community recently. There is a general theme going on with their story. Many of these folk have come from either not being in church for a long period of time or suffering (their words) through being part of a church that is not very life-giving. At The Well, we typically do a great job of scaring off chronic church hoppers because we’re a little, uh… different. If our ugly warehouse doesn’t care them off, something else is bound to. But, when people who are Christians come into our community, we want to be sure to let...Read More →
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May 2, 2008
Leading and Speaking with Confidence
I was driving my car today through town and saw this sign on a gas station / car wash. This is one of those higher end car washes that does the whole car, inside and out. The marquee says, “We really know how to clean your car right.” Now, on some level this is a little simplistic and cheesy. But honestly, I am really drawn to this. If I were to decide to go get my car washed (which, if you’ve seen my car you know that I wouldn’t) I would go to this place. Why? I love their confidence. I love the fact that they are convinced that they know what they are doing. I really feel like if I were to give them...Read More →
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May 1, 2008
The Role of the “Pastor”
A couple days ago I was writing how being bi-occupational allowed me to naturally pastor in a way that calls the community to live their gifting and calling for the sake for the kingdom… In case I wasn’t clear, let me quote from one of my heros, Lesslie Newbigin. He’s talking about the role of the pastor and says this, “The task of ministry is to lead the congregation as a whole in a mission to the community as a whole, to claim its whole public life, as well as the personal lives of all its people, for God’s rule. It means equipping all the members of the congregation to understand and fulfill their several roles in this mission through their faithfulness in their daily...Read More →
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April 30, 2008
The Lure of Shiny New Things
I’ve become a big fan of Patrick Lencioni and his leadership books. I think he sees things that most of just don’t see. The things he sees are those “duh” type of things too. I subscribe to his “Point of View” newsletter. (you can do so here). Today he sent out a thought on the lure of “new” things. At the risk of always evolving and always learning, he shows that there is some value in simplicity and consistancy. He writes about the phenomenon of In-N-Out burgers… There is a regional chain of quick-service (a.k.a. fast food) restaurants on the west coast called In-N-Out Burger. If you‘ve never lived or spent much time in California, Nevada or Arizona, you might not know about In-N-Out, but...Read More →
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April 30, 2008
Church Leadership Meetings: Is it Possible Not to Hate Them?
Meetings. We typically don’t like them. In fact, most of us hate them. This is true for many reasons. I’ve blogged about this before. At The Well we’ve been on a journey to figure out how to best form our meet time so that our time is well spent. I’ll be honest, I’ve gone back and forth between loathing out meetings and loving our meetings. Since we’re working in an atypical model with two part-time paid pastors, its a little more difficult to manage expectations and responsibilities and maintain communication as a team. Right now we’re only able to meet once a month so our time together needs to be well spent. In the past we’ve struggled with a number of things. The biggest struggle...Read More →
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April 26, 2008
Open Handed Ministry
(I posted this post over at my other blog that I don’t think will actually take off again because I am realizing I can’t put energy into two blogs, so I am reposting it here). If you are a pastor, here’s a question: How do you refer the people in your church? Most pastors I know use interesting language when talking about the congregation they pastor in. They usually are called “my people?” Now, I understand that this might be semantics but I tend to think that semantics are pretty dang important. Calling the congregation “my people” obviously speaks of possession. But, are they really your people or are they really God’s people? Sure, you say, of course they are God’s people. Right. What God-respecting...Read More →
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April 10, 2008
MereMission: Missions, Missional & The Global Church
I’ve got my first post of the new MereMission up. Here’s an excerpt: One of in things to say in churches that claim to be “missional” is something like this: “we don’t have a missions program, our church is a missions program.” This is a great statement, I’ve said it quite often and I am a firm believer that we need to understand and see our entire church as “missional.” This means, that everything we do as a community is for the sake of witness, for the sake of the proclimation of the risen messiah…. Read the rest of my post at MereMission
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March 28, 2008
The Church & Suburbia Seminar with Al Hsu
I know this is early, but with vacations in the summer, I’m trying to get the word our early. So here it goes…On August 8-9, 2008, my church The Well, in partnership with the Ecclesia Network and C4ML at Biblical Seminary, will be hosting a one-day conference with Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian around the topic of Suburbia and the mission of the Church. Register online here. EVENT SUMMARY “God always shows up in the most God-forsaken places.” - Alan Roxburgh In some ways, it doesn’t get any more God-forsaken than suburban America. This seminar will take a look at two important topics: Suburbia and the Church. For some people, there is a sentiment that its impossible to really be the church...Read More →
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March 25, 2008
Does Your Church Really Need Jesus?
I’ve been reading Organic Church by Neil Cole. I’ll admit that when I saw the cover I wasn’t too excited to read the book. The coffee cup just kinda turned me off for some reason. Then, at our Ecclesia Gathering Alan Hirsch kept raving about the book so I figured I would give it the old college try. I’ve been really impressed so far. I love the way he talks about church and following the leading of the Spirit. It’s clear that the most important thing for him is seeing the Kingdom of God be more present in our towns, work places, cities and communities than it is to “grow a church.” While obviously these two things are not necessarily opposites sometimes it is all...Read More →
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March 18, 2008
Pastoring Like It’s 1989…kind of
For the last two days I’ve been with out a computer. My MacBook Pro is on a little vacation for some R&R. Okay, it actually had a bunch of problems all at once and I finally broke down and sent it off to get fixed. I should have it back on Thursday. I am writing this post from my wife’s 12″ Powerbook. Now, if you know me you’re probably wondering if I am breaking into a cold sweat or something but I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed not having my computer with me all the time. Here’s why… I’ve spent more time thinking and reflecting. The thing with having my computer around all the time is that it makes it hard to just...Read More →
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March 14, 2008
Environmentalists in the Church
No, not those kind of environmentalists. Not the ones who talk about caring for the earth. I’m all for that. But, I’m referring to leaders who create environments that give room for people to change as Joe Myers talks about in his book The Search to Belong, “Environmentalists” practice restraint when it comes to controlling the results. They are primarily concerned with creating a “healthy” climate for spontaneity to occur. They develop simple environmental parameters and then sit back and see what happens. “Programmers” on the other hand, take control. If we are to allow people full opportunities to belong, we must switch from being group programmers to becoming group environmentalists. It starts with giving up control. Too often we press our good intentions to...Read More →
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March 3, 2008
Don’t
JudgeDraw Final Conclusions On A Church Based on One VisitFor whatever reason, we have a lot of people who visit our community on Sunday mornings. This is all fine and dandy. But, a thought occurred to me recently. I often want to tell those visitors that you can’t judge draw final conclusions about The Well (or any church for that matter) based on one Sunday morning visit. A few reasons: We have a team of people who preach. I preach maybe twice a month. Because of this team approach to preaching, you can’t come once and draw specific conclusions about the preaching style of our community. I am more emotional/big picture. Gary, our other pastor, is more of an intellectual and “rubber meets the road” kind of guy. David, a seminarian, preaches about once...Read More →
