“It is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours in Christian America.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the height of the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mused the infamous comment about the …
Leading in the way of Jesus is beautiful and incredibly vulnerable. We experience both joy and despair, fulfillment and loss, growth and disillusionment. Emotional cuts and bruises are inevitable, yet few of us know how to practice a spirituality that identifies, receives, and heals our pain. We need practices that anchor us in the love of God so hearts do not …
Over the last two decades, our culture has been in continual flux, shifting at an ever-increasing rate. In fact, quite possibly, the one constant within our culture may be our constantly shifting culture. This has been most notably aided by the emergence of the internet. Our grandchildren will, most likely, not know a world without the internet having seeped into …
Normally we think of evangelism as a process of telling. We are proclaiming or sharing something. And it is that, of course, but I’ve become more and more convinced that effective evangelism starts with listening. Here’s the thing: most evangelism strategies focus only on the telling part. They help people figure out what to say, how to present, the right things to proclaim. One size does NOT …
If you’ve been planting a church for more than a couple weeks, you’ve probably already encountered a good deal of disillusionment. And if you haven’t felt disillusioned yet… well, just wait. Sorry if that sounds ominous. Disillusionment isn’t fun. You thought one thing and it turned out to be another. You had hoped that family would join the church and …
Half of my church plant is comprised of people who’ve never really grown up with a church community. We gather monthly, and at one service I had the audacity to experiment. I broke the room up into sections based on religious affiliation. (Admittedly, I probably won’t do this again.) Nonetheless, I had people move around to a space that fit …
[The following is a guest post from our friend Steve MacDouell. Steve teaches at Fanshawe College, is the co-founder of Good City Co., as well as a Senior Editor at The Localist. He is from Woodfield—a neighborhood in Central London, where he enjoys instigating place-based projects, hosting workshops, and inviting everyday citizens to leverage their time, their ideas, and their creativity for the sake of their …
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 …
Two questions that people often ask me about how to engage in the neighborhood where they live are; “What are some things I can do to engage in my neighborhood?” and “How do you ever find the time to get involved in the place where you live?” Those questions, as simple and honest as they are, concern me. What is …
“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 …