ChurchPlanting.com

About three years ago I met a middle-aged man who had been working as an art conservator during the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), the Socialist Germany. He had been fired after the reunification of Germany and was since then jobless. He had been through a hard twenty years, most of that time in the [...]

Somebody once told me that if people were talking about me, they were leaving someone else alone.  Somehow that never consoled me.  And if I heard that my husband was being criticized, rightly or wrongly, it drove me crazy. People come to a church plant with differing expectations.  If these expectations are not met, rumblings [...]

In real life, arranged marriages can work well.  In church planting, not so well.  Here’s what I mean. We have neighbors who are from India, and they’re in an arranged marriage which is doing quite well.  The story is interesting.  He was born in America, so he’s a natural US citizen.  When he was getting [...]

Church Planting is tough and always carries a potential of risk and catastrophic failure. So what are the top ten mistakes made by leaders as they plant new churches? These are the mistakes I have seen repeated time after time with the church planters I have trained and coached.

The most common metaphor for Christian community is “family” and “household” (Rom. 12:10; Gal. 6:10; Eph. 2:19; 1 Peter 4:17). It dawned on me that we rarely apply this to one’s marriage and family. I curiously wondered why we fail to act in families as a community of Christians when it seems so obvious that [...]

It was one of those unusual moments in ministry. I received a phone call inviting me to come conduct Bible studies for a Filipino fighter named Manny Pacquiao. He was scheduled to fight Manuel Marquez in Las Vegas last November at the MGM Grand Hotel. Pasquiao is an 8-time world champion as well as a Congressman [...]

After a very slow start a Japanese language church plant is doing big things. We launched our entire Japanese language department as a church plant a few years ago. They languished until the pastor moved the congregation into a large house. Then they popped. In one year they launched three house churches in Honolulu. Three [...]