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Saturday November 7, 2009 ~ 0 Comments
But, I plan ahead and know that his time of year is always the busiest for me. In October and November, I am blessed to be able to talk to tens of thousands of leaders. It is tiring, but it is also a wonderful opportunity to brag on Jesus and provoke Christians toward His mission. Yet, as you can tell, it is a little tiring. And, during this season, I need your prayers. Here is a quick recap. See last week (part 1 and 2) for more info): Tomorrow, I'm preaching at Harpeth Community Church in Franklin, TN. And, then I head home Tuesday and collapse. Looking Ahead --------------------------------------------------
Just last week, I committed to speak on "missional disciplemaking" at the Verve Conference. I will share more about it later, but you can click here for the website. --------------------------------------------------
Looking ahead is Exponential 2010. They shared some info this week that I thought I would pass on to you. Exponential has assembled an diverse lineup for April 2010, and I appreciate gatherings like this where people from different tribes come together around the goal of learning and celebrating church planting. Exponential 2010 opens with Louie Giglio, closes with Francis Chan, and in-between includes including well-known church planters, authors, and leaders like (to name a few) Mark Batterson, Darrin Patrick, Matt Chandler, Ed Stetzer, Efrem Smith, Dino Rizzo, Dave Ferguson, Scott Thomas, Greg Surratt, Alan Hirsch, Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, Larry Osborne... and my fingers will cramp up if I try to list them all. If I recall, I am doing the first or second main session and, as always, a forum for church planting leaders on Monday and Tuesday. The best ideas, the strongest practices, and the most forward-thinking dreams are shared at Exponential. This is not a "our way is the only way" conference. The diverse ideas and varied cultures that make up Exponential might seem to be even contradictory! But the open handed approach that has made Exponential the strong voice for church multiplication it is make it a "must attend" event. There's something about church planters gathering. The energy that comes from thousands of leaders who eat, sleep, and breath sharing the Gospel with people and creating new communities of faith, new ministries, new outreach strategies, movements, campuses, networks, encourages and strengthens others. The assembly of these leaders becomes one of the most influential agents of change in our country. To be part of this crowd is an opportunity to not only learn from some of the best thinkers and practitioners in all things church planting, but it's also a place to meet with others, people like you, who are planting all over the country or burdened to do so. Come on, you know you want to - Register here. Posted on November 7, 2009 at 7:20 AM ~ 0 Comments Friday November 6, 2009 ~ 3 Comments
I've shared a bit about my journey toward health here on the blog (here and here), mostly because many of you asked me to. Even since then I am frequently asked to post more on the subject. I've been slow to do this, but as I came across a recent study that showed a link between obesity and brain shrinkage, I thought I would jump in again. Many of you already know that obesity (excess body fat that creates a significant health hazzard) is on the increase in our country. The Center for Disease Control explains, During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. In 2008, only one state (Colorado) had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty-two states had a prevalence equal to or greater than 25%; six of these states (Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia ) had a prevalence of obesity equal to or greater than 30%.
Diabetes But a new study claims that among the aged, "clinically obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue, while the overweight had 4 percent less brain tissue compared to normal-weight individuals." So, 125 lbs ago I decided to finally take care of myself - physically. This was no easy task since I had been 150 lbs overweight for 15 years, travel frequently, and had grown accustomed to eating what was easiest-- and that meant lots of fat, sugar and calories. In some ways I was, like many others, the victim of our fast paced, quick fix culture. But in another way, this was something I needed to repent of, because in the end much of it came down to choices. Some of the issues at the center of all this were thankfulness, temperance, self control, and stewardship. In short, when a man is thankful for the life, body and the food God provides, his gratitude produces self control and leads to the good stewardship of those gifts while neither abusing or misusing them. Still, when it comes to something like weight loss, exercise and healthier living it requires a plan. I was done with trendy diets, didn't have time (or interest) for a personal trainer, so I went the old school route. I am a simple man so my plan was simple: 1. I decided to eat healthier, and 2. I got on the elliptical 5 days a week (I unpack the details here). A few new wardrobes later, I feel great, am less likely to experience the diseases above and an more likely to hold on to more of my brain. Look, I know people are uncomfortable talking about the obesity problem in our country. We're afraid of coming off insensitive, judgmental, or looking hypocritical. So if I may, as a man who had to learn the hard way to take care of himself and the body that belongs to the Lord, let me encourage you to take care of what God has entrusted to you. I'm not encouraging anyone looking the same, or conform to the world's standard of beauty. But I am encouraging you to let the world see fruit of the gospel in us by living temperate, thankful lives. I'm still learning but I thought I would share it with you. There will be one more post on the health topic before I am all done. Posted on November 6, 2009 at 9:38 AM ~ 3 Comments Thursday November 5, 2009 ~ 9 Comments
As I recently mentioned, I am intrigued by the Independent Baptist Movement. It is often caricatured and frequently misunderstood, but definitely worth understanding. With that in mind, when I see research on this movement, it catches my attention.
Paul is the senior pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church and president of West Coast Baptist College in Lancaster, California. Clayton is the founder and director of Global Church Planters, which has worked with American missionaries and national pastors to help start more than three hundred churches around the world. I was happy to talk to Clayton about the new book, and think you'll find the interview and the book helpful. What prompted you to write Church Still Works? Alright, you can order the book here, follow Clayton Reed on Twitter here, and follow Paul Chappell on Twitter here. Now jump into the comments and hit up Clayton with your questions. He's hanging around today to interact. Posted on November 5, 2009 at 8:30 AM ~ 9 Comments Tuesday November 3, 2009 ~ 17 Comments
The game has seemed to lose some steam in the last few years. Maybe it's due to the development of "cooler" games. Perhaps it's due to the number of kids with neck injuries from nearly being strangled trying to break through. Whatever the case, it seems for the most part that Red Rover has gone to the playground cemetery along with King of the Hill. We'll have to hope for a resurrection. It has occurred to me that we often to adopt a kind of Red Rover Strategy in church planting and pastoring. Like Paul in Acts 16, we hear the call, "Come over and help us!" and we react with a violent attempt to just break through the line. We have a dream in our heart to plant or pastor a church and we become so consumed with this vision that we barrel right into a new town looking for the weakest link in the chain before ever getting an honest and clear picture of the people that live there. We start plowing into a community with strategy, plans, and really great books written by "cool" church planters and pastors without ever considering the group of people into which we're being sent. And before we know it, we find ourselves strangled, trying to break into a community that is not ready or able to receive the church we have planned. Paul and his companions are setting out to minister to people and they're running up against barriers along the way. The Bible says, "Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia, went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us!" The "Come over and help us" ends with a little dative case pronoun: "us." And, it matters. Here was Paul, sure of where he wanted to go, never stopping for directions, but being stopped at every turn. Until he received God's vision for ministry. And in the vision, he met a person, the man from Macedonia. We can learn a clear lesson from this story. Do not go plant or pastor a church if all you have is a vision for a particular kind of church, or because you think a particular city is "cool." You can only plant or pastor a church when you have a vision for the people. Part of being missional is to recognize that we are to go into a culture, engage the people of that culture, and plant a Biblically faithful church for those people, all the while acknowledging that culture matters in the way we do ministry. In many ways, the how of church ministry is determined by the who, when, and where of culture. My challenge is, don't plant or pastor a church in your head. Plant or pastor a church in your community. When you are there, that's when the Gospel transforms real people who are living real lives. When we are in love with someone else's community, we fall prey to community lust and demographic envy. We begin thinking, "If I could just be in this part of California, or this part of Seattle, or this part of Manhattan... then, my church would be incredible." Know and live in your culture, not someone else's. Don't just bring a model, bring the Gospel. Create a church. Don't create a plan. Most importantly, we must bring Christ, not just a church, particularly a way of doing church. Sometimes, I think we get too excited about the fact that we're leading a church. That's great, as long as we remember that we're planting the Gospel that creates a church, not a church that's known for being the best church or the most trendy or the most relevant. We're planting the Gospel and so we bring Christ and not just the church. Being missional has to be tied into the mission of Jesus, which is to seek and save the lost. Unlike the in the game Red Rover, we win when we get to stay with our new "team" and begin leading it in a new direction. Planters and pastors must first take the time to listen to the Spirit, responding appropriately His call to the particular people He assigns to us. Then, we can best respond to the call to "Come over" and win them for the kingdom of God. Posted on November 3, 2009 at 10:09 AM ~ 17 Comments Monday November 2, 2009 ~ 8 Comments
O.K, I just went over the edge dealing with Twitter spam. Today, I am getting a bunch of Direct Messages from all the folks who got "phished" and did not protect their password. Then, there are the inappropriate followers. Today, I was going through my "followers" for the week and trying to eliminate inappropriate ones.
Since I have over 18,000 followers, there is no way I can check them all. Of course, that is what some people suggest, but basically that means I need to spend way too much time or pay someone to do it. I am not willing to do either. So, what I do is I watch the names when I get the email notification of new followers. For the vast majority of time, they are just names, and I don't worry about it. Sometimes the twitter avatar is obvious--and you block it. Sometimes, they are questionable though--they might be something inappropriate or it might just be a name. Let me give you an example. These folks followed me: www.twitter.com/thebabesproject. OK. Do I block or not?
But, I could give examples that, upon opening, were quire embarrassing (including once sorting through the names in public), but you get the point. So, I have to check, but I have made a covenant with my eyes, know that I should flee certain things, and am trying to figure out how to do it. It seems there is only one way to do that and that is to look at the profile. And, therein lies the problem--some background pictures are pretty graphic. So, I tweeted and asked how others handle it. I received this article. Good stuff. Stop using Twitter. Create a private profile. Use Truetwit. Turn on email notifications and block the inappropriate ones from the email. Use one of the handheld options, they don't show the background. Get your wife to go delete the inappropriate ones. Tweetie, Twitterriffic, and apps like that do not open the full profile with the background pic. Use Twitter Karma. Install PowerTwitter for Firefox. As best I can tell, it found ALL the spam (and a lot of non-spam) but I could tell from the description. It's free and easy to use. So, for now, that's my plan. But I'd love to hear if you have any additional ideas! Leave your feedback in the comments. Posted on November 2, 2009 at 10:33 AM ~ 8 Comments Monday November 2, 2009 ~ 0 Comments
Here is my travel for the next couple of weeks. Thanks for praying for me and I hope to see you on the road. ______________________________________
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On the 8th I'm preaching at Harpeth Community Church in Franklin. ______________________________________
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On the 12th, I will also be preaching at the NOBTS Chapel and doing a dialogue after with the students. ______________________________________
Posted on November 2, 2009 at 5:22 AM ~ 0 Comments Saturday October 31, 2009 ~ 4 Comments
I am going to post more conference info later, including information about my trip to preach for my friend Bob Roberts at Northwood Church tomorrow and the National Outreach Convention next week, but this picture will be part 1. I will be teach at ReTrain, speaking to the leadership of Mars Hill Church, preaching to all the campuses at Mars Hill on Sunday, and then speaking at the Calibrate Conference (with the Assemblies of God) in Seattle, all over 4 days.
Enjoy. Perhaps you have a better caption than mine-- share it below, but be nice. ;-) Posted on October 31, 2009 at 1:36 PM ~ 4 Comments Thursday October 29, 2009 ~ 4 Comments
While I'm here in Chicagoland, I wanted to take time to point you to a helpful website. Bill Yaccino shared this with me and I thought it was worth your time. Bill is the Executive Director of Catalyst, a network of congregations in Lake County, IL that collaborate towards greater Kingdom impact. (www.Catalystweb.org) The site is a tool for organizing people to pray for their neighborhoods here in Chicago. You can also sign up and join others who are also praying for their block-- and you don't have to live here in Chicago. Take a minute to see how many people are praying for their neighbors all across northern Chicago at Pray4YourBlock.org
The guys behind it all want to encourage you to sign up at the website and... 1. Plant a virtual flag in your neighborhood. Check it out here. Posted on October 29, 2009 at 2:33 PM ~ 4 Comments Wednesday October 28, 2009 ~ 9 Comments
As I mentioned and shared details on Saturday, I'm doing a conference tomorrow in Chicago. Whenever I come to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I do a one-day seminar for pastors as part of my class. In this case, I will be focusing on "missional leadership." I recently taught on the subject in Oklahoma. Here is the video: Missional Leadership from Ed Stetzer on Vimeo. You can get more information about this training at the One Day web page. Here is the outline that I used in the video and I will be using tomorrow: Missional Leadership 1) Reconsideration of Leadership a) From superman to everyone
a) From three tiers to one mission
a) From "full service" to "simple mission"
a) God is a missionary God
Posted on October 28, 2009 at 11:16 PM ~ 9 Comments Tuesday October 27, 2009 ~ 6 Comments
A friend recently pointed me to an interesting approach to communicating the gospel in multiple languages. Hollywood veteran Bruce Marchiano (who played Jesus in "Matthew") is developing a film on the life of Christ and scripted word-for-word from the Gospel of John. Funding wont be coming from a major movie studio, but from millions of Christians around the world. Specifically, the goal is 10 dollars each from 4.5 million folks, most of it raised online from their web site. Each contributor is considered a "producer" and can provide filming input to Bruce. I don't think that's ever been done, Christian or secular. "A movie for the next generation" is how it is being billed. Using the latest in movie technology and techniques, the film is expected to be used around the world (read: translated into many languages) to impact millions for Christ. I though it worth passing on. Here's the movie promo. Go to www.newjesusmovie.com if you'd like to be a part. Posted on October 27, 2009 at 9:11 PM ~ 6 Comments |




































