Yesterday, I found out that 218 churches got our small group study kit, "Compelled by Love: A Journey to Missional Living" in one week. That's pretty exciting and intimidating-- in one week, 281 churches started using our resources to help their people live missional lives. We are glad to hear that churches are studying missional living and honored they would use our resource.

Go to lifeway.com/compelled to see the kit. The webpage has a promo trailer and you can watch the first session to get a feel for the study. Go here to see the work book and download a preview of the first chapter.

The Compelled by Love blog tour took a stop at the Dallas Morning News. Philip Nation wrote a few thoughts on our book, Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living (New Hope, 2008), in the Dallas Morning News religion blog.

He wrote ten things... I excerpted a few here:

1. Understand the Gospel. The mission of God is consumed with the person & work of Christ. As you understand Christ, you can accurately participate in God's work of redemption. So read the Gospels - a lot...

4. Watch for a chance to serve. People give away all of their energy on family, work, and menial chores. Look for ways that you can care for your neighbors - even if it is just cooking a simple dinner for them...

6. Love like Jesus. He lived a robust life of caring for the lost. In elevating sacrificial love far beyond any previous thinking, he gave an example for us...

10. Do it for one reason - the glory of God. The only reason for be missional is to make Christ more widely known. God is worthy of being honored by all of creation and it should be the main reason why we participate in his mission.

You can read all ten here.

The blog tour so far:

PhoenixPreacher.com,
Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox,
Alan Hirsch's blog,
Andrew Jones's Tall Skinny Kiwi,
Darryl Dash,
Micah Fries,
Marty Duren's Iemissional, and
David Fitch at Reclaiming the Mission.

Today, the Compelled by Love blog tour goes to Phoenix--and they asked a LOT of questions... grin. This is the longest blog tour visit to date.

So, take a look here at PhoenixPreacher.com. (The Lutheran guy asks my favorite question... but you already know that I am partial to Lutherans because of their missio dei emphasis.)

Also, the blog tour took a brief stop in this week in Rick Warren World (see his comments here). Thanks Rick.

The blog tour so far:

• Alan Hirsch's blog,


• Andrew Jones's Tall Skinny Kiwi,


• Darryl Dash,


• Micah Fries,


• Marty Duren's Iemissional,


• David Fitch at Reclaiming the Mission.

The blog tour for Compelled by Love continued today. The tour has included Alan Hirsch's blog, Tall Skinny Kiwi, Darryl Dash, Micah Fries, iemissional. Today, we visit my friend David Fitch at Reclaiming the Mission. David is a great thinker and writer and you will often see his links in my "Noteworthy Items" below. Drop by his blog and read the interview there.

Today, we started a blog tour for Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living, my new book with Philip Nation. Our first stop: The Forgotten Ways blog with my friend Alan Hirsch.

More soon (once the blog is working better). Be sure to drop by Alan's blog in the meantime!

As I have mentioned before, my former co-pastor Philip Nation and I have written a new book concerning missional living entitled Compelled by Love.

Our hope for the book is that it will help you push the idea of missional from being a leadership paradigm to a way of life for the people in your church.

The book is written from the perspective of love being a primary ethic for missional living. Ultimately, God's glory is the ethic and motivation for all we do. And the church being as loving as her Lord will propel us onto his missional work of redemption and care for humanity.

As I mentioned recently, Philip and I have a new book coming out... we were please to discover that it will be released simultaneously in Spanish.

Esta bien!

You can also preorder the books by clicking on the books.