What stops us saying ‘We would love to multiply where you are.’ The only way to do that is to overcome fear. Because fear is the opposite of faith. And if that has stopped you, don’t let having less not stop you doing more because scarcity brings clarity and if we make our vision and mission again. Serving the hurting. Saving the lost – We would see this as such an opportune time
It’s true we don’t know the future, but that fear can mean the moment we are in pauses the mission we are on – which is to make the name of Jesus known.
I don’t want to tickle your ears, but this might tickle your fancy
I think you’ll love listening to this wide ranging and prescient interviews as we discussed subjects including but not limited to Quiet Quitting in Church, Yoga, CS Lewis and what makes great literature!
Your biggest job to work on in the church, is you. People are not transformed by us speaking for Jesus what we don’t live for Jesus.
I found XCC physically testing, spiritually, emotionally and mentally strengthening, community building.
If there were lots of you, or your churches, would that be a good thing? Would it make a great deal of difference?
I spent some time with my friend from NewThing Josh Howard as he helped a small group of us think about movements of disciple making and church planting. Josh (who will be with us again at this year’s LAUNCH event in October) shared with us that in their work across South East Asia they radically changed their approach 8 years ago toward intentionally discipling people who would then go and make more disciples they call it “Train the saved, save the lost.” And it’s simple but can be disheartening because it’s not all up and to the right – it’s usually more like a J curve, you see some subtraction – and you don’t see the big crowds now. It seems nothing much is happening because multiplication is slow at the start, one person reaching out and reproducing Jesus at a time. But when you get doubling disciples every six months or so look out – you start to see something amazing. So in the First Quarter of 22 across the nations they are operating in, it’s starting to go exponential. In […]
Is the Bible the result of human endeavour or a divine/ divinely superintended book? How do we unite the history of it actually being written by real people in time, then edited etc., with the claim that God inspired the canonical texts?
The word disciple occurs 269 times in the New Testament. “Christian” is found three times. The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ, who made it clear that to follow him means we must become his disciple. But the church has made it possible for the vast majority of those in its ranks to be ‘Christians’ without becoming disciples of Jesus.
The churches of the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian, so churches are filled with ‘undiscipled disciples’ – though of course in reality there is no such thing.