ChurchPlanting.com

If my son were starting a church this weekend… and he came to me and asked, “Dad, what are the most important things I need to know?” I would think, “Man, this is my BOY! He has got to get this right.” I would pray a minute, ask him to take out his iPad, and [...]

It seemed I had tried it all! From dropping thousands of eggs from a helicopter to sending out what seemed like millions of postcards, but our church was not getting the “results” that everyone else had gotten. I hired coaches and mentors who told me “how” to plant the church. I did everything by the book, but the results were minimal in comparison to what everyone else was “getting”. Was there something wrong with me? Was I really called? Is this really what God wanted me to do, start a church from scratch?

Somebody here needs to be reminded that there are some things that only God can do.   At times that can seem scary, but mostly it is comforting to remember who is really in charge. This morning I was reading from Matthew 20:29-34…about the two blind men whom Jesus healed as he left Jericho, en route [...]

When I was a young church planter my team and I spent countless hours trying to deal with the kinds of complicated pastoral situations that inevitably come up – marriages on the rocks, mental illness, interpersonal conflicts and such. It is amazing how much trouble a small group of people can get into. The problem [...]

When I was in Mexico City recently, I attended the staff meeting at Comunidad Mosaico, a ministry that works toward transformation among the urban poor. They had a time of worship and, due to my poor Spanish skills, I understood very little that was going on. But I felt the movement of the Spirit among [...]

A few weeks ago, Georgia, my wife and I went to downtown Berlin to do some shopping. We had seven different stops to make. As we were leaving the house I told my wife that I wanted to “add value” to the employees of the places where we were going to shop. I prepared myself inside, [...]

A few weeks ago I spoke at an international English-language church in San Jose, Costa Rica– the emphasis being on “international”.  With about 400 people in attendance, the pastor told me that on any given Sunday they had about 35 different language groups present.  Even though the services are in English, many are using English [...]