I’ve always been fascinated by the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I just never imagined I would be able stand behind the pulpit where he began his ministry as a 26 year old young man. Today my dad, Gary and I took the afternoon off from our conference here in Pine Mountain, GA and took a little trip down to Montgomery, AL. Honestly, there is not much in this fine town. In the downtown, most of the store fronts are empty and the place was fairly deserted while we were there. But, despite the presence of current stores and people, the place is filled with the amazing history of the Civil Rights Movement. We all know about Rosa Parks and here...Read More →
Category: The Church
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February 27, 2008
Inspired by the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr
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February 27, 2008
How Not to Grow the Mission of your Church
I am in a seminar with Ken Callahan and we’re talking about growing and advancing the strengths of the mission of your church. Here are some notes that I think are helpful: When we are looking at a church, how do we improve our mission? Do we look for the weaknesses or the strengths? Where do we start. Most people would say we start with our weaknesses. This is the wrong approach. The usual approach we take to advance our strengths is: Preoccupation with weaknesses Compulsion toward perfectionism Misunderstanding of un-churched people Neglect some of the characteristics of a strong healthy church If this is your approach, what you have is the Natural Church Development approach. This approach, in a round about way, uses these...Read More →
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February 27, 2008
Ecclesia National Gathering Audio
If you are interested, I posted the audio for the Ecclesia National Confernce with Alan Hirsch and David Fitch yesterday on the Ecclesia Website. Check it out here
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February 13, 2008
“Giving and Stewardship” in the Local Church
I’m doing a little talk at this week’s Ecclesia gathering here in Maryland. Here are some notes that I promised I would put on my blog. Six Motivations for Giving: Compassion (sharing, caring, giving, loving, serving) Community (good fun, good times, belonging, family) Hope (confidence, assurance in the grace of God) Challenge (accomplishment, achievement, attainment) Reasonability (data, analysis, logic, it makes good sense) Commitment (duty, vow, obligation, loyalty) Some extremely helpful books where I have stolen borrowed most of my thoughts: Giving and Stewardship in an Effective Church Effective Church Finances
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February 10, 2008
Community: Stop Making Excuses
I was at the bank last July to send a large sum of money to Guatemala as the last part of our payment for the adoption. As I was waiting in line the man in front of me, in somewhat of a panic, was pleading with the bank tellers to help him with his situation. He had apparently deposited a check earlier in the day for a client that he wasn’t supposed to deposit, and he needed that check back. From the way he was talking, he needed it back badly. He wasn’t being rude. He was just very intensely trying to plead with the tellers and let them how know big of a deal this really was. The tellers, while trying to help, were...Read More →
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January 27, 2008
Dear Theopilus?
Reading this post by JR Woodword got me thinking. We are studying through the book of Acts together as a community. We’re in chapter 4 this week so we’re still fairly early on in the narrative. If you’ve read or studied the book of Acts you know that it is addressed to “Theophilus.” Luke is writing to this person (whoever he is) and sharing with him the stories of the early church. So, like I said, this got me thinking. If Luke were to write narrative about our local church or better yet the group of local churches in lower Bucks County. What would he say? As Willimon pointed out, “Theophilus will be told stories of people who overcome personal anxiety, who found security in...Read More →
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January 22, 2008
How is the Church like a Family?
This past weekend I preached from Acts 2:41-47. This is a passage that really has shaped our community significantly early on and it was exciting to look at it again a number of years later. One of the blessings of preaching from this text was that I didn’t feel like I needed to chastise or rebuke our community as I feel we’ve done a good job a cultivating a family at The Well. Of course, we have much room to grow but these people are truly my family. I started out sharing a bit of how the metaphor of family relates to the church. Here is what I came up with: You don’t “go to family.” Rather, you are part of a family. In the...Read More →
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January 18, 2008
Leadership in Acts 2?
I’ve been studying Acts 2:42-47 for the past week. I’m realizing that I could preach this passage 20 weeks straight and wouldn’t run out of material. So, I am trying to narrow my sermon down to the thing that I think is most pertinent for our specific community. While this likely won’t make it into my sermon , I had some interesting reflections on the leadership situation in this passage. (I guess you can consider this a sermon outtake). So, think about this for a second, if there are 12 apostles and there were 3000 people total, we now have 12 groups of 250. Hmmm… likely this isn’t how it worked since we see that they met in homes. Let’s say then that they split...Read More →
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January 11, 2008
What does it mean to “get involved” in your church?
I am curious about a question here. In your church context, wherever it is, what does it mean to “get involved.” I’m not talking about a general response, but what are the actual perceived (or real) expectations for you as a member of your church. Would love to hear some feedback from a wide variety of church contexts. So, go ahead, please share….
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January 7, 2008
Rethinking Church Websites
The following quote from the book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott that I am reading for my design work has got my creative, brainstorming juices flowing in relation to church websites. Here is the quote: “Website content too often simple describes what an organization or product does from an egotistical perspective. While information about your organization and products is certainly valuable on the inner pages of your site, what visitors really want is content that first describes the issues and problems they face and then provides details on how to solve these problems.” then they write, “It’s all about delivering content when and where it is needed and, in the process, branding you and your organization as a leader.”...Read More →
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December 27, 2007
Ecclesia National Gathering
For about 6 years I (and therefore The Well) have been relationally connected to about 10 or so church planters from all over the US. These men and women have been a great encouragement and been great partners in the gospel for us. From this relational network of pastors / church planters grew a new network of missional churches called Ecclesia. This year we are having our second national gathering in the Washington DC area and we’ll be playing host to David Fitch (author of The Great Giveaway) and Alan Hirsch (author of The Forgotten Ways). I love the format of our gatherings because they are so relational. Its a great mix of hearing from people who have been there and have tried stuff and...Read More →
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December 22, 2007
Books of 2007: Pastoral Leadership
I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and realized that this year was a fairly good reading year for me. So, I started trying to remember what I read and how I liked what I read. So, I’ve decided to share that here. I was going to post my thoughts all at once, but when i was done writing I had six pages of text! That’s way too much to read so I am going to post them one section at a time. Book Reviews to come in the next few days: Missional Theology General Theology Church Leadership Pastoral Leadership General Leadership (Business / Fiction Books) Countdown to Sunday: A daily guide to those that dare to preach by Chris Eardman Wow. This...Read More →
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December 17, 2007
Books of 2007: Church Leadership
I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and realized that this year was a fairly good reading year for me. So, I started trying to remember what I read and how I liked what I read. So, I’ve decided to share that here. I was going to post my thoughts all at once, but when i was done writing I had six pages of text! That’s way too much to read so I am going to post them one section at a time. Book Reviews to come in the next few days: Missional Theology General Theology Church Leadership Pastoral Leadership General Leadership (Business / Fiction Books) Organic Community by Joe Myers This, along with Joe’s first book (The Search to Belong), has been...Read More →
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December 14, 2007
Books of 2007: General Theology
I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and realized that this year was a fairly good reading year for me. So, I started trying to remember what I read and how I liked what I read. So, I’ve decided to share that here. I was going to post my thoughts all at once, but when i was done writing I had six pages of text! That’s way too much to read so I am going to post them one section at a time. Book Reviews to come in the next few days: Missional Theology General Theology Church Leadership Pastoral Leadership General Leadership (Business / Fiction Books) This second section is what I read in the area of General Theology: A Walk Through the...Read More →
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December 13, 2007
Books of 2007: Missional Theology
I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and realized that this year was a fairly good reading year for me. So, I started trying to remember what I read and how I liked what I read. So, I’ve decided to share that here. I was going to post my thoughts all at once, but when i was done writing I had six pages of text! That’s way too much to read so I am going to post them one section at a time. Book Reviews to come in the next few days: Missional Theology General Theology Church Leadership Pastoral Leadership General Leadership (Business / Fiction Books) This first section is what I read in the area of Missional Theology. The Open Secret by...Read More →
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December 4, 2007
Mission Statements are just mission statements
Doing some work on looking ahead to 2008 as we seek to do our best to be a church that matters for the Kingdom. In my reading I came across this Quote of the day, “Developing a statement of purpose is not delivering effective mission; it is simply developing a statement of purpose…the scriptures speak of very concrete forms of help, like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving shelter. That is to say, mission happens only when effective help has been delivered – until that consequential sharing of help has occurred, no mission has taken place.” Ken Callahan, 12 Keys to an Effective Church
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November 27, 2007
Are You Plugged-In?
Often churches (like mine) talk about making sure that people can “assimilate” or get “plugged-in” (i hate that second phrase – its so mechanical) to the community. I have always had a love-hate relationship with these ideas. I haven’t really been able to put words around why the idea didn’t sit well with me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I very much want people to connect with our community when they visit. I pray that our church can be a very, very hospitable group of people who love all people no matter what walk of life they are from. That’s something we try to do. Sometimes we are pretty good at it and sometimes we miss the mark. This I think, is true of almost...Read More →
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November 26, 2007
Why Some Church Programs Don’t Work
I’ve got two traits that often work against each other when it comes to pastoral ministry. First, I’m highly creative. I love being creative. This is a good quality. But, I’ve also got a bad habit of being all about and needing instant gratification. So, when you combine those two things, what you get is a leader who is always coming up with ideas and trying to implement that as quickly as possible. This isn’t necessarily the best thing ever. My co-pastor Gary has done a great job of encouraging me still be creative while doing so more effectively and and slowing down a bit. The truth is, almost no program or idea is so important that it can’t wait to be implemented or said...Read More →
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November 14, 2007
A Holy (Suburban) discontent
Tim Keel, author of the new book Intuitive Leadership, must be reading my mind. Or, it might be more accurate to say that I have been reading his mind. Or I could just say that I’ve been reading his book… Anyways, I’m about 60 pages into his new book and he is basically telling his faith story. He is reflecting on how he had an intense and authentic experience of spiritual community in college. Then, post-college he entered into the world of suburban america. he writes, “I was able to see a number of friends with whom I had live so intimately begin to lose their faith following college. That sounds dramatic, and i don’t mean it in the way you might initially read it:...Read More →
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October 17, 2007
A Conference that I Actually Need…
Dear blog readers, I wanted to officially invite you to a conference that I go to every year with Joe Myers (author of Search to Belong and Organic Community). Now, I’ve been to conference after conference in my young pastoral career. Many of them have been stimulating. But it seems like I am hearing the same thing over and over again. And, honestly, I’m done hearing about how the church needs to be “missional†or “emergent†and how we need to change because the culture is changing. Ok, I get that already. I’ve had it pounded into my brain over and over again. I get it. Now, those conferences are important, but I need something else at this stage in my pastoral life… Perhaps you’ve...Read More →
