» 2006 » October

Forty three years ago Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and proclaimed: “I have a dream!”

Imagine if instead he had said: “A dream is had by me.”

Same meaning. Different impact.

If you want impact as a writer or speaker you had better spend the rest of your life learning the trade. [...]

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“Tom” helped fuel a church planting movement amongst fervent monotheists somewhere in the Middle East—until his cover was blown and he was deported. The great thing about movements is they don’t rely on foreigners for their continued success. Tom still resources the local workers from a distance as the movement continues to expand.

Tom and his [...]

We launched our first church plant with an interest meeting for people who wanted to join the team. A leader from another church in the area crashed the meeting to complain that we were starting a new church in “their area”. As the church grew over the years we moved from building to building for [...]

Stumbled upon this article by Tim Keller on Why Plant Churches.

It’s the best I read so far on the topic, including anything I’ve written.

Send it around.

Church PlantingTim Keller

Developing “ears to hear” God takes time. We all have strong resistances to listening. First of all, we find it very hard to create empty spaces in our lives and to give up our occupations and preoccupations, even for a while. We suffer from a fear of the empty space. We are so [...]

Had a great Skype conversation with Liam Glover the other day. That’s Liam without the hair and me in the tiny box. Skype video adds a lot to the relational dynamic of a call. I’m running the v2 beta on a MacBook.

Back to Liam. He’s leading the pack in applying the NCD health paradigm to [...]

I spent most of last weekend walking around the gardens of Werribee Park Mansion hand in hand with Michelle.

The rest of the time I spent wondering about the decline of the Catholic church in the West and reading Philip Jenkins new book: The New Faces of Christianity.

The spread of Christianity throughout the developing world has [...]

Still thinking about Werribee Mansion and Catholic decline in the West. A few observations:

As a movement you could be at the height of “success” but a decade away from serious decline. It’s the “failure of success” syndrome.In fact, when the world changes it is the institutions with huge investments in buildings and in outmoded educational [...]

Just returned from a weekend away with Michelle at the Werribee Park Mansion. A gift from friends or our 25th wedding anniversary.

It was built in the 1870s by Thomas Chirnside, a Scotsman who sold up in the mid 1800s to come to Australia and build a pastoral empire. The family motto was “Do or Die”. [...]

A great story via Tim Elmore:

One stormy night many years ago, an elderly man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia. Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night.

“We’d like a room, please,” the husband requested. The [...]