3 Alternatives to Missional Communities: Family Discipleship

Posted by on Apr 28, 2012 in Children, Discipleship | 2 comments 85% of people who decide to follow Jesus, do so between the ages of 4 and 14.  Let that sink in a bit.  This is profound and overlooked.  This makes the discipling of children vitally important.  Not having a plan to disciple children is not an option. Many are mistaking a strategy for growth that includes a children’s focus as a plan for discipling children.  See this post for more...
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3 Alternatives to Missional Communities: Small Groups

Posted by on Mar 22, 2012 in Church Planting, Discipleship | 0 comments Small groups have been around for decades now and have been adopted at some level by most churches.  When you hear a presentation about missional communities, you will usually hear that MCs are not small groups.  MCs differ in terms of size (20 -50 for MCs 8 – 15 for small groups) and purpose.  MCs are community formed around mission.  Small groups can serve a lot of purposes. Let me...
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3 Reasons Why Missional Communities Are Not the Only Discipleship Model

Posted by on Feb 23, 2012 in Church Planting, Discipleship, Missional | 1 comment Missional Communities are the “it” thing in the church right now.  Honestly I love it.  The Church in the West needs a discipleship movement.  There isn’t a planter that I work with that isn’t taking seriously God’s command to make disciples.  For many of us, thinking of discipleship as the operating system of the church is foreign.  Many, myself included, are...
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Three Ways Church Planters Worship Themselves

Posted by on Jan 31, 2012 in Church Planting, Discipleship, Pastoral | 2 comments Spirituality is something I don’t talk about much on this blog, mainly because I want to keep things very nuts and bolts.  But I’m realizing that spirituality is about as nuts and bolts as it gets.  One thing many people struggle with is self-worship.  We put ourselves first in everything.  We do what is best for us.  We are generous to ourselves.  We promote an unrealistic...
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What Church Planters Can Learn from American Slavery

Posted by on Jun 2, 2011 in Discipleship, Missional | 0 comments In Matthew 9, Jesus is in full swing with his ministry.  He’s preaching the gospel, proclaiming the kingdom of God, healing the sick and exorcising demons.  It’s truly amazing stuff.  The text actually says he healed every kind of disease and illness (v.35)  At the end of the chapter, Matthew comments on how Jesus reacts when he sees the crowds. When he saw the crowds, he had...
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Asking for Money in the Early Days of the Church

Posted by on May 9, 2011 in Discipleship, Fundraising | 0 comments Many a church planters have wished that money grew on trees.  It would sure ease a lot of stress in the early days of the church.  A healthy goal for any new church is to be self sustaining financially.  The sooner that happens the better.  It’s typical when fundraising to base your outside support on needing supplemental funding for the first three years.  Assuming that by typical you...
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