» 2006 » May

Founder of the Vineyard movement, John Wimber, shares his insights in this 1994 message to church planters:
1. Constantly tell your story
2. Constantly tell his story
3. Constantly explain the mysteries of life
4. Constantly disciple
5. Constantly expand the infrastructure
6. Constantly live in brokenness
7. Constantly reevaluate and be flexible in what you are doingMake sure you download the [...]

If you’re committed to fueling church planting movements it won’t take you long to discover the greatest challenge is to find and grow the right kind of leaders.

Bobby Clinton, in his commentary on John’s Gospel, states three principals regarding how Jesus was intentional about selecting and recruiting potential leaders for his movement.

Clinton writes:

1. Recruitment refers [...]

There has been a big demand for the Startup Guide to Coaching Leaders. Thanks for all the encouraging feedback. Thanks also for the spotting some typos. My hard working blogmeister has uploaded a corrected edition.

I’m planning to release more ebooks. Happy to take suggestions for topics via the Comments section below.

Finally, a great book to [...]

Dave Zovak robbed me of my innocence with his Pizza of the Pharaohs shot. So he sent in this family snap taken on the other side of the Pyramids in an attempt to undo the damage.

Nice try Dave. But things will never be the same.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It [...]

Picked this up from Guy Kawasaki’s: Ten Questions with Bob Sutton. Some insights on what it takes to be an effective church planter.

Guy: What are the qualities of an effective leader (church planter)?

Bob: Some one who acts as if he or she is in control, but realizes that they only way to sustain some control [...]

Few people are aware that George Orwell not only wrote the novels Animal Farm and 1984 but also spent some time as a Bible translator. Not out of religious devotion but out of a devotion to good communication. This is what he wrote:

I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English [...]

Dave Zovak has ruined my image of the Pyramids forever with this photo. Here are his reflections on the experience and some insights on the Gospel and culture.
It should not have been there. It stood out like an American flag in a Middle-Eastern bazaar, but somehow it not only survived, but thrived.

Next to Egypt’s ancient [...]

Charles Chaney has identified four groups within each ethnic or social subculture. Here they are again.
Nuclear: those explicitly and self-consciously concerned about subculture identity.Fellow traveler: those to whom the subculture is a relatively important part of self-conscious identification;Marginal: those who occasionally think of themselves as belonging to the subculture; andAssimilated: those who explicitly exclude themselves [...]

Back in the mid 70s our youth ministry reached out to Cambodian refugees. After twelve months we discovered no matter how much we reached out, loved and served them, they never really felt a part of us. As soon as a Cambodian church was set up in the area it thrived. Why?

When we were church [...]