Incarnational Theology emphasizes that the Father has sent Jesus as one of us. God does not scorn the human condition rather God dwelt in the fragility of the human body (Philippians 2). This human form brought the Glory of God down from Mt. Sinai to the streets of Nazareth. The fullness of God somehow, someway was displayed in the limitations of the God-man Jesus. He …
One of the first things I discovered in planting churches was that the most combustible element of our missional endeavor was the work of cultivating community. Here’s a promise: the romanticism around planting a church will fade the moment you have real people with real personalities attempting to love one another in real-time. The more diverse your group and context, …
Forging communities on mission has been a refreshing and exhilarating experience. I’m a strategist and futurist by nature, so I have the propensity to convince myself I’ve sized up all the challenges that will come my way, before they come my way. There was one issue that I was not prepared to run into so regularly and widely… bitterness. Over and over …
No one likes to grieve. No one feels lucky to mourn. So when Jesus tells an eager gathering of disciples “Blessed are those who mourn,” I’m not sure church growth gurus would see that as the strongest recruitment strategy. Mourning in the Jewish imagination is not a foreign emotion. Mourning has deeply historical connotations for the Hebrew People of God. …
The Most Difficult Things to Count Starting from the small church of my youth, winding through my last 20 years of vocational pastoring, I have had a decent vantage point on the church growth narrative. When I was in a booming attractional church, we took pride in our voluminous of felt-needs programs. When I was in a liturgical church, there was …
In my first 10 years as a pastor I became accustomed to resources. I worshiped and served with a charitable portion of resources as unidentified supports around me. I had great worship facilities, great budgets and decently funded programs to suit any need or stage of life. I had on-hand artists to paint canvases for my sermons and quality writers …