It’s time to get ready for Christmas. Decorations, trees, lights and gifts are prominently displayed in the stores encouraging us to buy early and be ready for the consumer frenzy to follow. So how do we keep our focus on what really matters during this season? Here are some practices I have found helpful. 1. Find Your Centre I start preparing in …
We’re in the season of Advent: the beginning of the Christian year and a time of waiting, longing, preparation, and expectation. In the midst of a culture that wants to rush toward the warm fuzzies of a sentimentalized Christmas season, how can we cultivate the kind of attitude Advent is meant to evoke in us? How can we honor what this …
It’s that time of the year when many of us are in transition. Students of all ages begin a new school year. Some of us are starting new jobs, and at church we are getting ready for the new seasons of Advent and Christmas. Even the created world is in transition, that season between summer and autumn when, at least …
A few years ago, I coauthored a book entitled The Wholehearted Church Planter: Leadership from the Inside Out. The general thesis of this book is that almost anyone can plant some kind of church if they know and love God, know and love people, and appropriately know and love self. Writing on knowing and loving people, I reference Harry Emerson …
After taking some time to use the cultural web to exegete the neighborhood within the city, the same cultural web can be helpful to discern how to be the church in your context. In Creating a Missional Culture, I mention that if we are going to have churches where the community more fully reflects the character and ministry of Christ, …