If I am being honest, I’m not generally a big fan of books on church planting. My lack of enthusiasm stems from two primary observations. First, many books on church planting are authored by people who actually have surprisingly limited experience in church planting or whose credibility rests on a single (relatively meaningless) criterion—their ability to draw a large crowd. …
Top 12 Posts of 2016
It’s that time of year when we revisit the resources from the V3 blog that garnered lots of responses from readers/missional practitioners. You all shared the movement in powerful ways this year, and we thank you so much! Church planters and place-based missiologists used these posts to experience the movemental power of the Kingdom in their neighborhoods, church plants, businesses, and …
3 Lessons Church Planters Could Learn From Content Marketers
I’ve written before about how (oddly enough) copywriting made me a better evangelist. I also think the church could learn a thing or two from the world of content marketing. Now, just like with my post on copywriting, I probably need to clear up some misconceptions. Hang with me here. Isn’t content marketing kind of shady? First of all, a …
UK’s Innovative Church Planting Edge
Ash Barker welcomed me at the door of the Newbigin House in Birmingham, England. As I entered this enormous house, Anji, his wife, handed me a large mug of coffee. I walked into a huge living room and was greeted by two alpacas, three lizards, seven adults sipping coffee and a half a dozen kids playing hide-and-seek behind the furniture. …
"Church as Movement" Wins Readers Choice Award
We’re pleased to announce that The Church as Movement: Starting and Sustaining Missional-Incarnational Communities, co-authored by V3 Movement leaders JR Woodward and Dan White Jr. is the recipient of the Intervarsity Press Readers Choice Award! Church as Movement won for the category “IVP Praxis”. The publisher describes the Praxis line this way: IVP Praxis is a new line of books …
A Kick in the Seat of the Pants
Sometimes I just need a good “kick in the seat of my pants” to get me going. That phrase – kick in the seat of the pants – has always been a reminder that I need to open myself up to new ideas and get outside the box of my thinking, even in church matters. Roger Von Oech wrote a life-changing …
Church Planter, Find Your Tribe
Too many of us know how frustrating and even hurtful it can be to love Jesus’ church but not fit in any local church. Anyone who questions the elevated role of the Sunday service has felt the isolation. In light of this, The Church as Movement is more than the practical guidebook it sets out to be; it’s the resounding reminder …
The Engine of Jesus' Ministry
When it comes to discipleship, most of our churches follow the methods and ways of traditional learning. We teach classes, launch programs, or go through sermon series to cover an area of discipleship. While information is a part of the process of discipleship, it is incomplete as a whole to help us learn and practice the ways of Jesus. Discipleship …
A Textbook for Church Planting, Mentoring, and Missional Incarnational Movements
I love practitioner credibility. I love it when people who have actually done what they purport needs doing are able to share, from experience, in intelligible, compelling, and digestible ways, guidance about to lead. In The Church as Movement, JR Woodward and Dan White Jr. bring practitioner credibility in spades. Leaders of one of the most fruitful church planting movements in …
Becoming Missional Insiders
I still remember a day thirty years ago when I walked out of a large, new master planned community in Southern California. The gates were being installed, and because I didn’t live there, I thought I would never get back inside again to meet people and share Christ. On the way out, though, I noticed a small note posted to …