Here are some updates on friends, life, ministry, and conversations:
Avery Willis
Avery Willis and I have been friends for a few years. I believe we first met in a small "called meeting" in Orlando at the start of the Global Pastors Network. There were about 50 of us planning together to plant 5 million churches worldwide. Bill Bright had recently gone on to be with the Lord, but as this idea was his passion, Vonette Bright (and John Maxwell) gave each of us a baton to symbolically "pass the baton" on this plan. 
It was there that I heard of Avery's passion for orality. From his web page:
I had thought for so long that the Guttenberg revolution was a worldwide phenomenon. I grew up thinking that literacy was the one thing the world needed to level the playing field for everyone. Then one day I made an alarming discovery: five hundred years after the invention of the printing press only thirty-three percent of the world are truly literate. This stopped me dead in my tracks. Imagine the banner headline: "Approximately sixty-seven percent of the people of the world are non-literate oral learners! Read all about it!"If you printed that headline in every newspaper in every country of the world, in every language known to humanity and you threw it on the coffee table of every home on earth, close to four billion people could not read it!
You should visit his page and learn more. Avery Willis is one of my heroes. He has served as a missionary in Indonesia, written a discipleship program that greatly changed me (MasterLife), served at LifeWay (where I work), then retired from the International Mission Board so he could spend his life, well, doing the same thing he did before he retired-- telling people about Jesus.
Now, all that may make him sound old. And, that would be accurate (grin). He calls himself such-- but I just call him "wise."
But, guess who was my 1000th friend on Facebook? None other than Avery Willis. And, for that (very dubious) honor, he gets a mention here and a copy of my newest book, Compelled by Love.
Set Free Church
Some of you know of my friendship with the folks at Set Free Church in Yuciapa. We wrote about them in Breaking the Missional Code.
They have an important statement at their website that they are a church, and not a motorcycle club. And they are in no way connected with the organization with a similar name whose leaders were recently arrested. (Phil Aguilar and his Set Free Soldiers, known as a Christian motorcycle group, were arrested.)
The two groups have had some history that I will not rehash here, but you should continue to be excited about Set Free Church in Yuciapa and in dozens of daughter churches around the United States. I've been in the office with Pastor Willie in Yuciapa and they are reaching and serving those far from God with an unparallel passion. I love their ministry and do not want people to be confused.
Alltop: Church
Alltop now has a church site, and edstetzer.com and several great blogs are featured there. Not familiar with alltop? It's a series of websites that seek to "help you explore your passions by collecting stories from "all the top" sites on the web." They pick a series of "top sites" in each catagory. Related sites are grouped together into collections, called "aggregations," and can be found in individual Alltop sites. Like church.alltop.com. You can find more helpful details here.
Jim Poit at the Crystal Cathedral
I had a fascinating call with the Executive Pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, Jim Poit. 
For more about Jim, he was recently interviewed in Church Executive Magazine.
I was surprised because I don't move much in that world. But, it was good to hear from Jim on Thursday and learn what is happening there. This summer, Jim is preaching on Sunday mornings and going verse-by-verse through the Book of Acts.
I was surprised (and blessed) that he held up a copy of Comeback Churches to the congregation this Sunday and recommended they all get a copy to work through it as a church. Thanks, Jim!
For those of you who read the blog, you would know that my approach would be pretty different than the Crystal Cathedral. But, it was great to hear from Jim and look forward to hearing more.
Bobby Vaughn at Glocalnet
Had a great talk with Bobby Vaughn this week. Bobby is the new Director of Glocalnet at Northwood Church. Bob Roberts is the Sr. Pastor.
We talked a bit about young leaders, church planting, and the future. I have had the privilege of training for them before and look forward to another time. He explained,
We have our normal 9-month internship which is for those who have an interest in church planting, have the right skill sets and a definite calling, but may lack the ministry experience necessary to jump right into Church Planting. It is a class one night a week where they are taught by Bob and the rest of the NorthWood staff, along with other key leaders. We can accept as many into this program as we want. This program runs from September through May of every year.The other program we have is called the Residency, where we choose 4 or 5 very well qualified Church Planters who raise their own funds to come be "on staff" at NorthWood for 12 months. They are a part of the daily life here at NorthWood and get to go on trips and be involved in our daily ministries around the world. This program can start at any time, just depending on the Residents timeframe, it's just 12 consecutive months.
To be a part of either program, a planter must first take our online pre-assessment at churchplanterprofiles.com (and used "Glocalnet" as the agency). Once they have completed that, we do a formal interview with the planter and wife either by phone or in person. We do not pay our Interns or our Residents, just putting that out there, because that is always the first question!
Another opportunity that we have for Church Planters are our Turbo Trainings. We typically hold two per year. Our next one is coming up next week (August 14 & 15), but the first one of 2009 is March 5 & 6. We cap our registrations for these events at 100 people in order to keep a more intimate and informal atmosphere where people feel free to ask questions and get to spend one-on-one time with NorthWood leadership and other key leaders. Registration for the March Turbo will be open Monday, September 1st. People can register at www.glocal.net and click on "Turbo".
Threads Video
My friends at Threads have posted a video for our new "Sent" study that will be first available at Catalyst. Watch the video here.
My Current Message Series (Zag)
A few people (well, really, two people) have asked if they could download my Sunday messages. Yes, you can. If you are interested, you can listen to them here.
The series I am in right now is called "Zag." The focus is the Kingdom of God in the teachings of Jesus in Matthew. The idea is that when the world Zigs, in the Kingdom we Zag.
This Weekend
I will be gone most of the weekend, finishing a very late book, preaching on Sunday, and making sure I spend some time with the family. Have a great weekend, worship on Sunday, and get some rest.
Once I am done with this book, I will be doing the same!
Posted on August 8, 2008 at 8:27 AM ~ 3 Comments
Tagged with: crystal cathedral, glocalnet, poit, set free, threads, vaughn
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3 Comments
08/08/08 @ 1:10 PM
Congrats on your 1K facebook friend, appreciate your affirmation of Willie and the rest of the Set Free churches and the great ministry that they are doing across the country. Our friend, Don Overstreet has been a great advocate for the Set Free Churches as a church planting activity. Also thanks for recognizing the son of another of our friends, James Vaughn, Bobby is doing a great job with Northwood,
from one amigo to another, adios, "paco"
08/08/08 @ 9:24 PM
I wanted to be in your list of friends today!
It was a pleasure to meet you a couple of weeks ago during LifeWay's Sunday School Week at Glorieta (I spoke with you about assisting the BGCT with evangelism conferences in 2009--and inquired about your opinion of Thom Rainer's Simple Church book, the success of which you indicated envying!). I've been talking about the info in your presentations since arriving home.
"Compelled by Love"--it's a great title, and the exact truth! It appears little compels today's believers intrinsically to obey and serve the Lord as it should; if love doesn't do it, then something's wrong with those Christians and their confessions! Seminary-trained vocational ministers can give their congregations lots of things, but we can't give them intrinsic motication; if we could, I wouldn't be sitting here tonight--I'd be out passing that motivation around for the good it'd do my job tomorrow! Lengthy, but how I've typed it in a recent small groups article (below signature).
Have fun this weekend preaching about zagging in a zigging world!
David Troublefield
Minister of Education
Lamar Baptist Church
Wichita Falls, TX
(home of the Hotter Than Hell Hundred bicycle race)
ARTICLE EXCERPT:
Fuel for the Long-Haul: Position and Passion before Vision and Mission
Anything Jesus Christ desires for Himself as Lord of the universe is what all Christians everywhere also want for Him—how could any real ones not? There’s no good thing that a conscientious believer won’t now do for his Lord, Jesus! The fuel of churches’ evangelism ministries for the long-haul is what Christians realize gratefully about their present spiritual positions before God (rescued, from the well-deserved eternal penalty due for all their sins—and standing forgiven, in His righteousness) and the sincere passion believers have for the One who permanently changed their forevers. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself has become believers’ Passion.
“One Big Zero” describes the former life of each person truly born-again. The New Testament admonishes Christians to “remember . . . you were without the Messiah, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, with no hope and without God in the world” and “dead in your trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1 and 11-12, HCSB). With no exceptions, each Christian really is radically redeemed, having been “rescued . . . from the domain of darkness and transferred . . . into the kingdom of the Son” (Colossians 1:13). On the outside looking in—that had been the apostle Paul’s spiritual position, too, before encountering the risen Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road. After that meeting and for the rest of his life, the testimony of Paul—and each member of the church-starting team with which he traveled the Roman Empire’s cobblestone highways—was, “the love of Christ compels us” (2 Corinthians 5:14). That personal love-relationship with the Rescuer, the Transferor, the Forgiver and Savior—it propelled Paul and his mission team constantly forward through Asia and into Europe with the good news about life in Jesus despite the hunger and homelessness and cussings and garbage-like treatment those men endured (1 Corinthians 4:9-13). Paul didn’t stop his evangelism efforts; it’s reported that he was stopped by an executioner’s axe—a sobering contrast to the confessions of many in 2008 to be Christians but holding so little appreciation for Jesus—Himself hammered onto a cruel cross in their places and for them—that they fail to attend Bible study weekly or even to arrive on time when they go.
Vocational ministers may cast vision for their congregations’ cell groups, and they might teach cell group leaders the details of their mission statement. But, for the sake of souls, cell groups must be evangelistic for the long-haul; vision and mission act as those groups’ GPS, but position and passion are their required fuel. Organize evangelistic cell groups whose members will act on their vivid salvation-testimony memories and the fact that Jesus Christ paid the price for the spiritual standing they enjoy now. Christ Himself urged believers, “Remember therefore what you have received and . . . keep it” (Revelation 3:3). Always keep a tank-full of it!
(Catalytic Fuel: Senior Pastors Leading Enthusiastically)
08/14/08 @ 8:04 PM
And an awesome sermon series it is!
(Are you sure we can't keep you?)