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 …
Scripture is quite clear about the Church’s responsibility to the foreigner: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Lev 19:33-34); “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the …
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – good advice from Winston Churchill Looking at the results and making decisions based on how it affects those results is called being pragmatic. It is a process of dealing with things sensibly, realistically, based on practical considerations as opposed to theoretical ones. So should we be pragmatic about church planting? This tends …
In a previous post I discussed a guaranteed method to reduce workloads for overwhelmed pastors and church planters: reduce the number of monthly worship services. In this edition, I ask a related question: do worship services have expiry dates? Or does what we have now work great? In terms of expiration, high church liturgies don’t update or shift much at …
We jump back into the question of holding space and self-care without sacrificing the ethos of the pastoral office. As pastors we help shoulder the burden of trauma carried by members of our community. The cost of this work can be overwhelming. Yet, to do this work well we must take care of ourselves without feeling the guilt of our …
Do you feel like a failure if you haven’t converted anyone? This was the question that my friend asked me about my work in the neighborhood where I live. My friend who is not a Christian, had read my book Urban Spirituality: Embodying God’s Mission in the Neighborhood. In this book, I write about the work I do in my …
The new year has begun – not the calendar year or even the liturgical year but the year around which many of our lives revolve – the start of school for kids, collegians and graduates and the end of summer for all of us. It is time for most of us to get up to full speed after relaxing vacations, …
It’s the moment I delight in most at a dinner party. It’s the lean back in your seat, completely satisfied (or maybe too full) moment. It’s the pregnant pause, dishes spread across the table with only scraps of food remaining moment. It’s the late in the evening with no place to go moment. Friends–new and old–linger around the table in …
Gratitude and Evangelism: These words elicit very different responses for most people, yet both are scriptural and represent deep values within our Christian faith. For some, “evangelism” has become a bit of a guilt ridden term, for others it has become a term that represents oppression, superiority and elitism. I have even met some in the faith who refuse to …
Here at V3 we get the joy of encountering stories from around the globe that inspire and encourage us and we hope to do the same for our readers by highlighting a few. We are honored to come alongside our church planters as they labor to ground their leadership and missiology in community. We are grateful to be part of …