It’s an intriguing exercise not only to ponder the answer, but to muse on why the Ghanaians would even ask the question. For them, did the credibility of the missionaries’ message depend on the willingness of the missionaries to give their whole life for its sake? It is a question that has pierced by heart, and agonised my soul, and pounded the treadmill of my mind more than any other. What if this was it? For life. All of it. Till death. What if the Lord asked me to give the whole of my life to model discipleship that perseveres until the very end?
To lead a Church Multiplication Movement, you need movement leaders. Find a persuasive leader and others with a passion for multiplication. A plan and a strategy can help, but people follow leaders. Having the right person leading is vital to move a movement toward multiplication. The movement will never happen unless key pastors are modeling sacrifice and calling others to the same.
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| Gordon MacDonald |
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| Gordon and Gail MacDonald |
” … I am emotionally less resilient when I lose sleep. There were early days when I could work without regard to sleep and feel energized and motivated. In more recent years my threshold for despondency is lower on less sleep. For me, adequate sleep is not just a matter of staying healthy. It’s a matter of staying in the ministry – I’m tempted to say it’s a matter of persevering as a Christian. I know it is irrational that my future should look so bleak when I get only four or five hours of sleep several nights in a row. But rational or irrational, that is a fact. And I must live within the limits of fact. Therefore we must watch the changes in our bodies.” (John Piper, When I Don't Desire God, 205)
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| The Multi-Site Church Revolution |
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| A Multi-Site Church Road Trip |
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| Multi-Site Churches |
How did Paul help Corinth? He planted a church. The city of Thessalonica? Another church plant. Did Paul mix it up in Ephesus? Maybe a wrestling gym with a crucifixion theme? Of course not—he planted a church.To read the entire post click here.
Planting Churches. Planting The Gospel.
The planting of gospel-centered churches, filled with gospel-centered people who live as grace-leaking, missional monsters as lights in the darkness, inviting the dead to come alive in Jesus Christ and to dwell in the Kingdom of God—that is the hope of your city and mine.
Our cities don’t need more shows. The movie theaters, stadiums, and Redboxes have that covered. Our cities don’t need the planting of services, but they need the missional going of Christians, our disciple-making, our witnessing—that’s church planting.
We have the power of God that makes demons shudder, that sets captives free, that can save a thief on the cross, that can comfort a prostitute, that can redeem a drunk, that can restore a religious hypocrite—that can fulfill all that we are looking for, made for—that power, that word, that name, that person is Jesus.
That is the number one missional strategy of the New Testament. Nothing has changed since Acts 28. We cannot improve upon what Dr. Luke has chronicled. And for us to put more weight behind any other strategy might be the most idiotic thing we could do. This strategy is old, normal, and completely supernatural.
And maybe, just maybe one day we’ll hear, “There is much joy in that city.”
Church planting is difficult work because it's all-encompassing. The lines between home and ministry are so blurred that it's easy to lose sight of what appropriate boundaries are and what emotional and physical health looks like. Church planters, not a wife in that room cried because we don't understand the pressure you are under or because we have unrealistic expectations of you. We feel the pressure, albeit different pressure, as much as you, and we care about your success probably more than you do.Read the rest here and revisit the principle frequently.
We love you, we respect you, and we sincerely want to be a help to you. Although we are not a resource just to be used to further your ministry, we are your best resource for life, family, and ministry.
We are your helper, yes, but we need your help, too. We need your understanding and listening ear.
Those of you searching for something larger, faster, and more significant, who feel that if you could just be somewhere else doing something else as somebody else, then you life would really matter- Jesus has come to confound you. I'm not referring to those who need to flee to somewhere else for safety's sake. I am referring to the discontented who have not yet learned what it means that Jesus is our portion and and that he is enough for us. You have wandered far from home. You cannot glorify God by trying to become him… He may just decide to pick you up and carry you to somewhere sexy in order to undo you! He may call you to courageously prize what is overlooked and mundane among those whose cravings for the next and the now might cause them to soon overlook you for another more hip pastor. Or he may call you to nowhere sexy so that you can learn that you can make a difference in Jesus even if you are somewhere forgotten by the world.Oh that we would always remain humble, no matter our position or authority… content, no matter our calling or abilities. May Jesus be our portion and hope… our life lived for His glory alone.
The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else--not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes--will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow raising statement. But to those who have done any study at all, it is not even controversial.
Ask Steve: Why is it important to see church planting as a gospel-initiative? from Acts 29 Europe on Vimeo.
Only two countries have more non-believers than the US: India and China. The US is the third largest mission field in the world. Unfortunately, our efforts at evangelizing the unchurched have all the pace of a southern summer. Few believers have relationships, much less friendships with non-believers.
The Christian lives under a tension of duality, looking to participate in and benefit from secular culture while simultaneously being called to live according to God’s ways. The common inclination is to keep the two separate.... The believer’s call is to realize that God is at work in culture through common grace, using all things to carry forth His purposes. This changes the triumphant desire to redeem and restore culture through our own efforts to a gospel-centered response to grace. It sends the Christian into the culture to live, as Timothy Keller puts it, “with Christian distinctiveness,” intentionally walking out the implications of the gospel in each arena or role in life.For the whole article click here.
A call to excellence alone would fall short—many people are excellent at what they do but are driven by motives other than the glory of God. Some Christians pursue success in God’s Name and for His glory but trample the tenets of the gospel in their pursuit instead of displaying thoughtful and articulate application of the gospel to their work. The Christian strives to contribute excellence to the culture through a life marked by Christian distinctiveness. This changes the way we interact with our waiter, our co-workers, our boss and our spouse. It changes the motives of our heart from self-centered indulging or protecting actions to God-focused response and praise.
Walking out the implications of the gospel in your daily life takes thoughtful consideration of how the gospel applies to your work, talents, neighborhood and home. Believing lawyers, teachers, artists, nurses and parents exhibit Christian distinctiveness differently due to the inherent nature of their vocation.... Thoughtfulness of action and speech are the fruits of a heart changed by the grace of God in Christ. This heart sees no divide between a secular and sacred world but sees God’s creation that He is working to redeem. This empowers the imagination of a believer to see God’s design for their work and to strive toward its intended beauty in society. When this is the lens of the heart’s vision, we see opportunities to align our lives to God’s ways at every turn. Our behavior shines like the light it is in the dark world around it.
Jeff Sorvik was just announced the new national Director of Church Multiplication for the Evangelical Free Church of America. Looking forward to working with you Jeff!
Leave room in your schedule to meet with new people and new converts. When you meet folks ask them where they live and if they are at another church just visiting or considering your church. Don’t meet with folks who live elsewhere or are in another church. Do meet with folks in your area who are new to your church. Don’t hand off the visitor assimilation so far down the food chain that you don’t know the new branches and fruit. If you want, tell folks from the front where you will be after church and that you want to meet the new people and give them a gift of a free book. Tell everyone else where to go for prayer and to connect with the old branches. You go somewhere else. Welcome new folks joyfully, have a gift, and get their information then so you can follow up. Even if you close 1 family a Sunday you grow by a few hundred in a year. And, new people bring new people. if you are feeling real crazy, do a monthly new people dessert meet the pastor and his wife in your home. Larry Osborne still does this at 8000 and gets to scout new leaders and people firsthand so he keeps doing it.
But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances. In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular. Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.
What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against. We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers. We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.... We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.
You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.
The EFCA exists to glorify God by multiplying transformational churches among all people.THE VISION STATEMENT
We are praying that God would grant us one million disciplemakers impacting one hundred million people with the gospel along with one hundred million people with the gospel along with one hundred Acts 19 locations globally where the gospel is transforming whole cities and regions rather than simply a neighborhood.What little I've heard about the Acts 19 strategy involves an effort of ReachGlobal (the global missions arm) to saturate key global cities with a focused infusion of people and resources for the sake of generating city-wide movements that trigger kingdom expansion in entire regions. It will be interesting to see where this all leads in the days and years to come.
During the final message of the retreat, Matt Chandler made a statement regarding our evangelistic and gospel presence in the community as pastors. These words were burned into my heart as soon as he spoke them, and they have been echoing in me ever since. Matt said, "A beast in the pulpit, but a coward in the neighborhood is not a win!"(HT: Joe Thorn)
It is generally easier to be courageous on Sunday mornings with the people of God, yet cowardly among the lost during the rest of the week. Gospel boldness is almost effortless among those who already affirm it, but it can be far more difficult when we must stand before others and herald the good news they find foolish. "A beast in the pulpit, but a coward in the neighborhood is not a win." Truth. Let me also say it this way, "Woe is me if I am bold among the people of God, but timid among the lost."
So don’t cheapen this Independence Day by simply making it about burgers and beer. Dare to discuss the realities of sacrifice, self-denial and honor. Plant seeds about the cost of freedom in the hearts of your sons and daughters. Consider how you might use the opportunity to help your children think about the grace we enjoy as a country. Pray for those who do not enjoy the gift of freedom. How can this day serve as a conversation starter with those you celebrate with? Help your family to dream a little bigger and expect a little more.(HT: Josh Patterson)
The healthiest churches are those who reproduce, according to a national research project called FACT2008. Among Protestant congregations surveyed, those whose leadership spent the most time recruiting and training other leaders were the healthiest. Similar results came from leaders who promoted a clear vision and emphasized evangelism. The massive survey factored in results from more than 2,000 randomly selected Protestant congregations.From the book Viral Churches by Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird.
To set-up your account, you have the ability to either customize spending categories in the program or to import those categories from your book keeping software like Quickbooks. Once the accounts are set-up, the users download the app onto their smartphones (droid or iPhone) and are ready to go. From that point forward when any purchase is made either on a church credit card (or personal card for reimbursement) the expense is entered into the app and a photo is taken of the receipt, which is then attached to the spending record. This means no more fat wallets or lost receipts, because they are all stored digitally in your Expensify account! In the featured image you can see what the expense form looks like on the iphone.
This tendency, unfortunately, is not limited to the early church but now plagues American Christianity. Each week, scores of believers forsake the assembly of the saints and, instead, tune in to a televised, streamed or podcast sermon. While radio offered the first taste of listening to a sermon within the comforts of the home, modern technology affords the opportunity to listen on the road, in the gym or on a mountain. These benefits are incredible blessings that should be used for our edification, but they are no substitute for the local church.(HT: Village Church)
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.An important reminder as we scramble to find success in good methods and leadership ability. The most helpful means for mission advance is to help people see a clear vision and yearn for that which is greater than themselves. What is our "vast and endless sea"? It is found in the glories of Christ, the invisible God, the firstborn of creation, the one through whom all things were created, who made peace by the blood of the cross. (Col 1:15-20)
Many of us can come across like planting is where it's at, or that planting in an urban context is the thing. Planting is important, but we sometimes unwittingly give the impression that pastoring an established church, especially outside of the city, is second-best. That's unfortunate. Both planting and pastoring are important. While cities are important, so are the suburbs and so are the rural places.(HT: Dashhouse)
When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.(HT: JT)
"Whenever our civilization wants a library to be catalogued, or a solar system to be discovered, or any other trifle of this kind, it uses its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve ordinary men standing around. Jesus did exactly this."
