Don’t Ask Me No Questions, and I Won’t Tell You No Lies
Recently I got to see some market research for Alton, the city I live in and have grown to love. The report was created for churches to use in reaching this community. Now, maybe you don’t think I should call…
Pastors of the Scattered Flock
We recently finished watching The War, a Ken Burns documentary that is about as long as World War II itself was. The sheer number of people killed was unimaginable. An estimated 50-60 million worldwide lost their lives. The economics of…
Being a Neighbor
If you’ve been following this sporadically updated blog, you know that I am a part of an effort to plant a community of missionaries in Alton, IL. I have written about the conviction that developed in me last summer that…
Suffering and Fate
There’s a phrase that has been rattling around in my head for about a year: He suffered the same fate as us. It has come to shape the way I make decisions, especially difficult ones. Jesus did not save us…
Spiritual Asceticism
“Faith without works is dead.” So says James, bringing a difficult tension into the Christian life. Protestant Christianity, at least, with its emphasis on faith alone, has had a difficult time figuring out what to do with James’s words. I…
What Are We Planting?
One of the new catchphrases in the missional church world is that we shouldn’t plant churches, we should plant the gospel. By being gospel-centered, rather than church-centered (normally pronounced, “Self-centered”), the mission can be preserved. It’s also a way of…
Ironic Church Planting
When I was in seminary, the head of the youth and family ministry department spoke to the new class of students and said that we shouldn’t go into youth ministry unless we were in it for the long haul and…
A Quote about Church
Have been doing some thinking and reading lately about the idea of being a missional church. Maybe it’s not something that we can become gradually, but there has to be a near-complete break from what we’re doing now. Something like…
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