Covid19 has been tough on church worship services, but it has also exposed something beautiful—the Church can gather without walls. When you pare down the Church to its essentials, something potent is discovered at its core. Could it be time to re-explore the DNA of the church when it’s decentralized, when it takes on the form of a grassroots local …
I don’t like to grieve, I prefer to smile, but I find myself grieving. I don’t like to lament, I prefer to find ways to anesthetize the pain, but I find myself lamenting. Watching the cruel murder of George Floyd by a police officer who is called to protect and to serve the community, demonstrated once again how racism, which …
“Who am I and what on earth am I doing here?” “What is my identity and what is my purpose or calling?” “What is God’s will for my life?” These are just some of the many questions most of us have at some point in our lives. Most of us, and particularly those of us who have been in church …
The Church has never had so much access to great online content about God, but what makes people part of your congregation is their connection with each other and with you — the way you live life with God together as people: discipleship. Here are a couple ways you can serve your church right now to help them grow as …
With rising gentrification, wealth disparity, and the decline of organized religion, often along racial lines, planting churches requires power analysis. This webinar will use a basic framework of decolonialism to reconstruct a vision of church planting that shifts the center of power from being in the possession of the ruling class (clergy, institutions, men, white folks, professionals, etc) to being …
(Note: This article was originally written before COVID-19. The ideas contained are now applicable to a time, whenever that may be, when we all can gather again.) In my previous post, I introduced my church plant Cypher Church, and discussed how we’ve intentionally shifted our community away from a worship event. Not only have we removed weekly services, we’ve also …
Rev Morgan Schmidt, a Presbyterian pastor in Bend, OR, has created an innovative online group called Pandemic Partners so that people in her community can help one another in these tough times. Morgan essentially found a creative way to crowdsource kindness online. “By posting how-to-guides on its Facebook page, Pandemic Partners, located in the Presbytery of the Cascades, has taken …
A 4-week Immersion to begin and build a social good enterprise for the sake of missional presence in your neighborhood w/ Hugh Halter About this Immersion 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 …
[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 …
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 …