Mission
Like ministry, mission encompasses many things. It is tempting to define mission based on your passion or skill set. To the evangelist, mission is reaching the lost. To the humanitarian, mission is feeding the hungry. To the legalist, mission is defending the church from error. But mission is more than all of these things. […]
Reading the Bible Contextually: An Experience I Will Never Forget
When you zoom out from single verses and begin to read the Bible in more meaningful wholes there are several things that will begin to notice that you may never have noticed before. This can be true from reading a whole chapter to reading hundreds of pages. The benefits of reading larger pieces of scripture […]
David Clayton Shares Three Core Values of Ethos Church
David Clayton’s article over at Wineskins this morning reminds us that mission is more than just something we teach and preach. Mission is an organizing principle and culture that must infiltrate our thinking, our ministry, our speech and our actions. The main question here is not how do we talk about mission…it is easy to […]
A Minister’s Take On Church Steps Outreach (Part 3) by Jimmy Hinton
This is Jimmy Hinton’s third and final blog on how the Church Steps Outreach has been working for their congregation. I am so encouraged by this! Thanks Jimmy for passing this along. Praise God that He is up to some mighty things when it comes to reaching the lost! In the two previous blogs, I […]
Why We Junked Mission Statements
Four years ago we had an elders/staff retreat to discuss the future direction of Northwest. In these types of retreats, we would collectively work through a number of things in regard to vision, mission and purpose as a congregation. As a part of this discussion we decided it was time to re-think our mission statement […]
The Biggest Issues Being Discussed in Christianity Are All Connected
There are several topics that come up over and over again in Christian circles, particularly among church leaders, including: Reforming our ecclesiology, the idea that our worship needs an overhaul and… The segregation of the church into professionalized, age-specific ministries and the pitfalls that brings…and The failure of parents and youth ministry to disciple our […]
Here is What is Creating a Disconnect in our Churches and Why So Many Leave (Leadership & Ministry Lessons Part 6)
I have been writing a series of posts on leadership in ministry based on the book Combat Leadership by Captain Adolf Von Schell. This sixth post is probably the most important one yet. So important, that I changed the title in hopes of getting more response out of this one. Please read the whole post, especially if […]
Problems with Missional
There have been some posts addressing the problems with the missional movement. Here are a few you may want to read: Scot McKnight’s post Test Your Church. Scot’s post is not so much a slam on missional as a whole, he endorses much of what is good about missional church. In the process he does […]
James McCarty’s Thoughts on Why Young People Are Leaving Churches of Christ
James McCarty wrote an interesting post on why young people are leaving Churches of Christ: Homeless: An Essay on the Ecclesial Lives of Young Adults from the Churches of Christ James lays out 5 reasons he believes young people are leaving Churches of Christ and then ends the post with some words for those young people and […]
Multiplying Missional Leaders by Mike Breen
My favorite book on ministry just got knocked down to my second favorite book on ministry. Until this last week Andy Stanley’s Seven Practices of Effective Ministry was my favorite. Mike Breen’s Multiplying Missional Leaders has taken the top spot. There are a lot of people who talk about things like discipleship, a few who […]