Waking Up to the Discovery of a World at Risk: Earth Day 1970 “Get this garbage out the lobby now,” shouted the manager of the Kahalui Motel. It was April 22, 1970. Ed Yamamoto, student body president of Maui Community College and 12 other students had just stacked the last of 60 huge black bags of trash in the lobby …
Watch: How to Strengthen Community in Our Churches
Dan White Jr is back this week to provide a wonderful perspective on church community, how we can strengthen those bonds and what scripture says about our relationships in the body. He offers some practical steps and goals for fostering healthier, deeper relationships in the church. Don’t miss his new book with JR Woodward, available here. “The braided rope of our …
Listening as a Leader
Learning who to listen to is just as important as learning how to listen. In a world of unlimited resources, self-proclaimed experts, and incredible access through technology to information, discerning which voices to listen to can be a difficult task for a any leader. In the current postmodern situation, many emerging adults have developed a hyper-awareness of the limited scope …
Watch: Church as Industrial Complex
JR Woodward (author of Creating a Missional Culture) and Dan White Jr. (author of Subterranean) have trained church planters all over North America to create move-mental churches that are rooted in the neighborhood. Their book features an interactive format with tools, exercises, and reflection questions and activities. It’s ideal for church planting teams or discipleship groups to use together. It’s …
Death Tsunami: Church Decline in the Millennial World
In this 12 month series we are inviting both church leaders and church planters to learn to lead with foresight and imagination in the radical way of the servant Jesus. We will share with you examples of those who are already imagining and creating new forms of change-making, life-making and church-making. Examples of Past Action In my first two posts …
Rejected, Dejected, Confused: Dealing with Frustration
Returning from Mission It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. “The Real Work” …
Film as a Form of Mass (Theology at the Theater, Part 2)
Philosopher and theologian, James K.A. Smith, in his book Desiring the Kingdom, helps us understand that at a gut level, we are creatures who love and desire. Thus we need liturgies, rituals and routines that reshape our desires. While Smith focuses on how worship gatherings could be better designed to shape our desires toward the kingdom, Craig Detweiler, in Into …
What has Hollywood to do with Jerusalem? (Theology at the Theater, part 1)
I remember sitting down with a Christian friend of mine recently. He had just finished his MDiv at Fuller. He was working as a teacher, active in church and engaging in meaningful fellowship. Yet he found himself in a funk in which it was hard for him to escape. As we sat at the coffee shop he told me about …
Change is Happening at Warp Speed: Can Your Church Join In?
In my recent blog post I encouraged readers to prepare for “change and opportunity.” In the next 10 blog posts in 2017 I will invite you to join an unusual group of innovators who are imagining and creating a range of new ways to live and engage some of tomorrow’s challenges and create new forms of church. These innovators are inviting …
Three Ways to Build a Church Planter Pipeline
Where do church planters come from? This morning, I was on the phone with a friend who is a denominational church planting leader. We both agreed that one of the major obstacles to planting more churches is the lack of identifiable pipelines for church planters. Most church planting networks and denominations are struggling to find qualified planters. Where do we …