» 2005 » June

Next week I’ll be participating in the Forge Emerging Church Summit. Forge sent me some questions they want me to respond to on a panel. Here are the questions with some brief responses.

1. Briefly use some words and phrases that describe for you what the future of the Church will look like.

Let me begin by [...]

Two weeks ago I passed the anniversary of a milestone in my life. June 15, 1988 I was in the middle of an ugly church fight wondering how I would make it through.

Since launching the new church eighteen months before we had added a family every week and now we were at over 200 people. [...]

Following up my post on Flagship to Movement here are some thoughts about some common threads linking the case studies.

1. “Apostolic” leadership
John Peters, Ralph Moore, Rick Paynter, Tim Keller—have apostolic vision. They see beyond their own car park. They see cities, nations and the world transformed by fresh, authentic expressions of the church. Without their [...]

Just returned from a two-day retreat with some Aussie church planters. Spent the first session listening to their stories.

One planter had been on the roller coaster ride. Dramatic growth followed by a big crash. Found God in the chaos and now he’s rebuilding. Another was scrambling to cope with the 300 Sudanese refugees that had [...]

I’m noticing a trend amongst flagship churches. They are becoming movements.

Earlier this year I taught in the church planting school at St Mary’sAnglican in central London. They have about a dozen planting hopefuls in training. Planted nine years ago out of Holy Trinity Brompton, St Mary’s has grown to over 800 hundred mostly under 40s. [...]

Following my post on Raising a Family here’s another family tree. This one from an AOG in Melbourne. Does Pareto’s principle (the law of the vital few) apply here? 80% of the new churches will be planted by 20% of the existing churches. I’m doing some thinking about a trend of flagship churches spawning church [...]

I’ll be at the Forge Summit in July running a workshop and participating in a panel discussion. Great to see you there if you are local or have a travel budget!

Study this family tree long enough and you’ll understand why churches should be planting churches.

The Australian Business Review Weekly ran a feature on Pentecostalism last week entitled “Prophet-Minded”.

I responded with a letter to the editor. I’m not sure if they’ll publish it. But here it is anyway.

Adele Ferguson’s article on the rise of the Pentecostal churches (May 26) could have benefited from the perspective of history. Renewal movements [...]

Tall Skinny Kiwi has been asking is the Emerging-Missional Church a movement? To help find an answer he got Dr Paul Pierson’s input. Dr Pierson formally taught history at Fuller. He’s been a major influence on my thinking on movements. Here’s his summary of what a Christian movement looks like according to Paul Pierson:

They always [...]