I think a lot about the importance of living well in every tense—specifically, past, present, future, and present-future tenses. Here, I would like to think out loud, applying this concept to the practice of evangelism, one of the critical skills of well-qualified church planters. Past Tense Before I became a follower of Jesus, I was quite a rebellious iconoclast. It …
We continue where we left off in my last post discussing Jeremiah 29, focusing particularly on God’s call to faithful presence in the places He sends us. It’s striking and, indeed, disturbing to realize that exile was God’s doing. Some would say God was punishing the Israelites for their lack of faith and obedience, that He was addressing their rebellion and …
Lately, I have been learning a lot about what it means for a community to be a healthy or “abundant” and the importance of community for personal and communal well-being (for this education I am indebted to John McKnight and Peter Block, namely their book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods). How do you imagine an abundant, …
Coupling a background in public policy and industrial engineering with a spiritual fervor for making things just in the world, Mako Nagasawa brings expertise to the confluence of theology, practice, and public policy. Mako Nagasawa also brings his expertise to this year’s Praxis Gathering as one of the many exciting, missional presenters. Mako is involved in numerous missional-justice fronts. He is a coauthor …
The Praxis Gathering facilitates interaction among missional practitioners through the exchange of real-world, hands-in-the-soil experiences. Every Praxis Gathering presenter is currently engaging in missional practices and comes to the conversation with a passion to share what’s working in church planting and to inform against what’s not. One such missional practitioner is Gideon Tsang, a pastor at Vox Veniae in Austin, Texas. His church, Vox …
The Praxis Gathering facilitates interaction among missional practitioners through the exchange of real-world, hands-in-the-soil experiences. Every Praxis Gathering presenter is currently engaging in missional practices and comes to the conversation with a passion to share what’s working in church planting and to inform against what’s not. One such presenter is Tim Soerens, with whom you’ll get to spend time at Praxis Gathering 2015. Tim is …
Our culture has once again begun to realize the significance of the local, of place, of being rooted. In contrast, Enlightenment thinkers subsumed particular “place” to universal “space.” At least this is the argument made by phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger, who believed that Truth could be revealed only by carefully attending to the things and people nearest to us. The …
The V3 Movement is proud to introduce… Praxis Gathering 2015 presenter Debra Hirsch. In addition to extensive experience within the church planting movement, Debra Hirsch is a speaker, counselor, and author whose combination of rigorous study and relational communication makes her an excellent person to engage with regarding missional church matters. Among her many credentials are the cofounding of the Forge Mission Training …
In our last post we began looking at the formation of church planting teams from a perspective of the beloved Fellowship of the Ring. We explored the common mistakes church planting teams make, and we looked at the Early Church to see how she became established in the surroundings of her time. If you missed it, feel free to check it out, as it will help establish a …
In the movie the Fellowship of the Ring, at the Council of Elrond, a plan is hatched to cast the One Ring into the fires in Mordor which will destroy the Ring and end Sauron’s evil reign. As the question of what to do with the ring is brought before a team assembled by Gandalf the Great, fighting breaks out, and warrior wills …