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!