Market Place Mission

There is a seismic shift in American culture, the church now finds itself in increasing irrelevance in its “come to us” posture. The Church is invited to break down the sacred/secular divide by creating sustainable missional faith-communities while providing services and relational connection to local neighborhoods. This is where Mission and the Market can converge in context. As early Trappists …

New Learning Cohorts for Planters & Pastors

The V3 Movement is overjoyed to offer new innovative learning cohorts this fall. MarketPlace Planting Early Trappists Monks created enterprises to that funded their missional work, so today’s marketplace planters and pioneers will artistically find ways to start businesses that contribute social good and while engaging civic structures of a particular place. Join us this fall as Hugh Halter trains …

Inevitability of Conflict

Most of us as church planters are probably eager to get the ball rolling, set some concrete rhythms of gathering our community together, and implement worship services from the get-go.  But, as our community was in its launching phase, I took note of two vital thoughts that pivoted my own church plant’s focus. Pathways One, I participated in a Praxis …

Five-Fold Proclamation: Part 2

In my previous post I suggested that after years of teaching students to preach the way I was taught to preach (assign a text, which fit me well as a “teacher” on five-fold), I started to wonder, “Am I trying to force apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds, to preach like teachers?” To put it more positively, I began to imagine, …

Five-Fold Proclamation

I was trained by one of the 20th Century’s “Princes of Preaching.” And, “no” that isn’t an exaggeration.   In 1996, Haddon Robinson was named in a Baylor University poll as one of the “12 Most Effective Preachers in the English Speaking World.” In 2006, he was recognized by Christianity Today in the top 10 of its “25 Most Influential Preachers of …

Feelings vs Commitments

If you’re a church planter like me, then you’re aware that there’s been a growing emphasis on the 5-fold person gifts found in Ephesians 4:11-16: And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the …

Will Your Church Plant Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

Can I make a confession? I love zombie stories.The “zombie apocalypse” genre has always fascinated me, for some reason. I find myself attracted to movies, TV shows, and books that feature some version of a zombie apocalypse and what happens afterward.Part of the reason I think I’m interested is because of the questions these stories evoke: What remains when all the …

Statistically Significant

Christianity Today put out a recent statistic on just how much a decline the religion is facing today … in an astounding trending data set, within the past half century, all of the religions including differing denominations have been either a.) incrementally sloping down in numbers or b.) flatlining and experiencing no new growth.  Only one religion bucked the trend …

Why Listening is the First Step of Evangelism

Normally we think of evangelism as a process of telling. We are proclaiming or sharing something. And it is that, of course, but I’ve become more and more convinced that effective evangelism starts with listening. Here’s the thing: most evangelism strategies focus only on the telling part. They help people figure out what to say, how to present, the right things to proclaim. One size does NOT …

Breaking Down Walls

My Lenten theme this year is Breaking Down Walls. I was not just thinking of the controversy about the wall on the U.S/Mexican border when I chose this topic. All of us have walls in our lives, products of our own brokenness and often too, of our responses to the brokenness of others. These walls separate us from the one …