At the V3 Church Planting Movement we get the question all the time “Why do we need to plant more churches?” It is a valid question. Certainly in most cities we can see a church edifice every couple miles and in some cities every few blocks. It might appear we don’t need any new churches. Additionally, the church currently does …
For Your Grandma’s Church, Too
By Josh Hayden, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church of Ashland, Virginia Sometimes a resource is so helpful it transcends the category it was created for and ends up changing the entire conversation. Church as Movement is a resource that does just that—it broadens the scope of church planting to a growing movement that focuses on discipleship, the mission of God, …
Free Webinar: Creating Missional Communities, with JR Woodward & John Poitevent
“The church cannot storm the gates of hell by gathering around consumer needs. A shared life and the shared story that Jesus is King are its rallying points.” –The Church as Movement Missional and community are two buzz words being used quite a bit in the church world these days. But what do they really mean, and how do they work together? In …
Subverting Church Planting Stereotypes
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. …
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 …
The Key to Movement
In this post, we continue what we started in my last post on Jesus and Movement (see bottom of this post). My two posts can be read separately or together (in any order). The Key to Movement In his book The Great Omission, Dallas Willard identifies the key reason why we don’t see movement take place in the West today. We have …