V3—Equipping you to start a movement.
At the end of each year we revisit resources and posts that aided our church planters and helped us continue to build this dynamic, missional movement. This past year saw an excellent variety of posts that dug deep into strategies, spiritual practices, leadership pitfalls, and shared authority to name a few. We’ve assembled the most-read posts so you can reflect on them again (or for the first time if you missed them earlier) and share them with other missiophiles.
10. “Ministry at the Cost of Discipleship” by Tim Catchim
Describing the difference between disciple making and ministry is kind of like describing the difference between a square and a rectangle. A square can be a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square. They both have four right angles and four sides. Which is why they are often lumped into one another. However, only the square has four sides of equal length.
Applying this to ministry and discipleship, you can do ministry without making disciples, but you can’t make disciples without doing ministry, or at least not the way Jesus made disciples.
9. “You Don’t Have to Preach Every Sunday. Try This Instead.” by John Chandler
[W]e believe that our liturgy is a time for all to participate. We include the role of preaching in that. . . . We believe there are myriad voices in our congregation that can preach, and we want to develop others who have that vocation. We also desire to start other neighborhood congregations, and we believe a primary obstacle to that will not be a shortage of people or places to gather, but a shortage of developed preachers.
8. “Don’t Try to Make Disciples Until You Deal With This Problem” by Dan White, Jr.
Leaders are notorious for offering idealized reflections of themselves. We’re all tempted to suppress anything that would threaten our guru image. We must take a sledgehammer to that superiority soaked in sage spiritual insight.
7. “Five Reasons We Do ‘Liturgy’” by John Chandler
The word liturgy means ‘the work of the people’ and we say so every Sunday. It is a gathering of a people together for a shared experience, and not a tightly constructed program for an audience to watch. We have found that a structured liturgy provides the means for many people to participate.
6. “Ten Books from 2015 Every Pastor and Church Leader Should Read” by Chris Smith
These books are ones that I believe will draw us deeper into the challenges of our day and deeper into faithfulness to the way of Jesus. This list reflects a diversity of authors, genres, and perspectives, but I believe that they will help our churches live more faithfully with one another and with our neighbors.
5. “Jesus Told a Joke. Did You Miss It?” by Dr. Karen Wilk
Have you ever tried to retell a funny story or joke, only to have it fall flat as a pancake the second time around? When you add two thousand years between the telling, this is especially likely to happen.
4. “Don’t Try Too Hard to Start a Church. Do This Instead.” by Tim Soerens
We desperately need to pioneer new ways of planting churches in North America. Of course there is going to be risk, that’s the nature of any new venture. But right now the carnage is just too horrendous. The public shame to church planters compounded by the private bewilderment with God is just too crushing. We need to find some fresh new ways of starting churches.
3. “Stations of the Cross – A Practice During Lent” by JR Woodward
A collection of fifteen amazing online experiences and resources to aid you in thinking about how you as an individual, congregation or community of faith might want to engage in this practice. You will find each one of these sites are incredibly meaningful. Definitely take the time to visit each one.
2. “Top Ten Must Read Books on Spiritual Leadership” by JR Woodward
The V3 Movement is committed to helping you make disciples, plant churches and start a movement. Such an endeavor will, of course, require you to grow in your leadership skills. . . .If you want to grow in your spiritual leadership capacity, these ten books will help.
1. “Why Planting a Missional Church in the Suburbs Is So Hard” by Ben Sternke
The key ingredient for the formation of friendships is “repeated spontaneous contact.” That’s why we make friends in college: because we are, by virtue of where we live and our daily activities, forced into regular contact with the same people. It is the natural soil out of which friendship grows. Contrast college with the typical suburban family, “each of us living in our own separate nuclear-family castles, with our own little faux-estate lawns, getting in a car to go anywhere, never seeing friends unless we make an effort to schedule it” (David Roberts). The environment we’ve constructed is literally a barrier to the forming of friendships and community.
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