Grounding Your Church Plant

As church planters, one of the key questions we need to be able to answer for our missional communities is this: “What is the Church?”  The premise for being able to answer this question lies on the fact that, most people who have gone through some sort of negative experience with an institution will fall into a distaste and a …

The Praxis Gathering 2019

In our fifth annual time together, we will plunge into the hands-on-work of Life Together in Community with particular emphasis on creating a missional-community, a tethered community, a multi-ethnic community, a peace-making community, and a healing community. We’ve gathered some of the best on-the-ground church planters and practitioners to furnish us with the possibilities for lighting a path ahead in our churches, …

Market Place Mission

There is a seismic shift in American culture, the church now finds itself in increasing irrelevance in its “come to us” posture. The Church is invited to break down the sacred/secular divide by creating sustainable missional faith-communities while providing services and relational connection to local neighborhoods. This is where Mission and the Market can converge in context. As early Trappists …

New Learning Cohorts for Planters & Pastors

The V3 Movement is overjoyed to offer new innovative learning cohorts this fall. MarketPlace Planting Early Trappists Monks created enterprises to that funded their missional work, so today’s marketplace planters and pioneers will artistically find ways to start businesses that contribute social good and while engaging civic structures of a particular place. Join us this fall as Hugh Halter trains …

Of Oaks and Aspens

A pastor friend of mine, Jonathan Cleveland, recently reminded me of a metaphor that is not necessarily new but is good to revisit, especially when talking about missional church planting and ecclesiology. The imaging of this metaphor revolves around the differences between an oak tree and aspen tree. I live in Colorado, at a higher elevation, where Aspens are an …

Five-Fold Proclamation: Part 2

In my previous post I suggested that after years of teaching students to preach the way I was taught to preach (assign a text, which fit me well as a “teacher” on five-fold), I started to wonder, “Am I trying to force apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds, to preach like teachers?” To put it more positively, I began to imagine, …

The Trinitarian Community

The concept of the “Trinity” is often so complex that sometimes we don’t really know how to engage with God as “three in one”. But, if we as church planters want to engage with the culture around us through a missional community, understanding the Trinity can help us answer key questions in regards to what community is meant to look …