ChurchPlanting.com

Not that long ago my wife and I were sitting in our kitchen, preparing a nice family dinner. Suddenly our doorbell rang. Going to the door we saw Ghebremariam, a 38 year old woman from Eritrea who works for Mariam. Ghebremariam is a refugee from Eritrea, a neighboring country to Ethiopia. She had to leave three [...]

We stopped to get a hamburger the other night.  While debating what to have on my Whopper Jr., the lady pointed out, “Have it your way, this is Burger King.”  Isn’t that great, I thought.  Wouldn’t life be grand if I could have it “my way” all the time, even some of the time? The [...]

A large percentage of church planters are newcomers to the places where they start churches. They arrive as protagonists, with a goal of transforming the spiritual climate of their adopted communities. This is admirable, yet often short sighted. While many communities are new, and have no past tense, other places where churches are needed are [...]

Ever feel overwhelmed by so many needs and so much injustice in the world that you end up paralyzed and do very little?  I was feeling that way and Dr. Soong-Chan Rah gave me some insight in how to respond when there are so many causes and so little time.  I was at a special gathering planned [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Hi friends, this email just came to me from a pastor who has taken the missional community bug pretty seriously over the last five years.  He’s now wrestling with a question we get asked over and over. Maybe it is something you’re wrestling with as well. Ken says, “I wanted to asked you what you [...]