Time to Sound the Alarm! We Have a Discipleship Crisis in the American Church
This crisis is on two fronts. 1 – Failing to Mature Existing Disciples: How does a disciple mature? How do they go from milk to solid food (1 Cor 3:1-2)? I believe our assumptions of what creates a mature disciple are faulty and left untested, therefore, they perpetuate without question. If you think attendance and […]
Have We Given Up Studying the Bible With People?
What do you think about someone when you hear they have Bible studies with people? Does it make them seem like a super Christian? Maybe they sound like a saint? What if that was just an ordinary thing to do? What if being a saint was just another word for being a Christian, because that […]
Why Are We In Decline? What Appears to Be a Math Problem is Actually a Spiritual Problem
Imagine the AAA Widget Company. AAA Widget was started 80 years ago by an energetic team of entrepreneurs. They had a vision and they executed the vision for 50 years with excellence. The problem today is that they haven’t added a new customer in the last 30 years. The only way to add customers is […]
This is When the Church Grows
The church grows when God’s people become more concerned about the fate of the lost than they are concerned about the comfort of the saved. If we love our traditions more than the salvation of the lost, we will fail to reach them. If we think our goal is perfect worship, we will fail to […]
What Will Our Generation Look Back on And Regret?
Sometimes I wonder what I will look back at in 10 or 20 or even 30 years and regret in regard to Christianity and church. Here is the main thing I think we are going to look at and shake our heads at our past selves – we couldn’t get outside ourselves, outside our comfort […]
Can We Start A Discipling Movement In Churches of Christ?
[As soon as I posted this I realized I was off on the wrong foot. If it is a movement, we won’t start it but we would have to embrace it. And I believe God is moving us in the direction of discipleship and discipling in line with the Great Commission (which Barna tells us […]
“Preach the Gospel at all Times…”
“Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” – Francis of Assisi In a world where Christians used words more than deeds this was a needed pendulum swing. As the pendulum swings to the other end and Christians rarely use words in public faith proclamation, instead hope that a life well lived will […]
Has Studying Replaced Doing? Our Evangelism Problem
I have a shelf full of books on evangelism but that doesn’t make me evangelistic. We have a problem if we have read more books on evangelism than the number of people we have studied with. I am convinced that you don’t have to be an expert or know the latest (fill in the blank) […]
The Obedience/Evangelism Disconnect
If our salvation were to be contingent upon getting every jot and tittle just so then would one be lost if they disobeyed the Great commission? Technically the Greek there isn’t an imperative but over and over again we understand the Christian mission to be one of going and telling. There is no more important […]
Making the Foreign, Native: Connecting with Culture on Three Levels
Cultural awareness is very important in Christianity. We get focused on this when it comes to international missions, especially full-time, long-term, over-seas missionaries. They can spend years studying language and culture in order to be effective in a new content. It is an attempt to make the foreign native to us. It is to identify […]