In the Coracle

Reclaiming the Mission » Church Planting in Post Christendom – Is There Such a Thing? Fuller’s D.Min Course

March 27th, 2009, No Comments

Some of you who are hanging around this blog are interested in discussion of church planting, as the blog began years ago as the story of a church planter trying to find his way in a suburban/missional/emergingish world.  Church planting isn’t out of my mind by any means these days, but it’s not at the [...]

Have you read “Building a Multi-Ethnic Church” by DeYmaz?

August 11th, 2008, 1 Comment

Hey you! Have you read this one from Mark DeYmaz? The Jossey-Bass books are generally awesome, and this looks great. If you read it, would you mind summarizing it for me as I’m a bit behind in my own book-inbox :-)

“Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation (J-B Leadership [...]

Tags for Where We’re Going

July 24th, 2008, No Comments

Today I had a really helpful and powerful chat with one of my heroes, and though I want to digest that a bit before talking about it here, it also spurred me to find a page in my journal and open it up.
Here are some tags that I wrote in my moleskine notebook a while [...]

It’s all about timing

July 9th, 2008, 1 Comment

23 Listen to me;
listen, and pay close attention.
24 Does a farmer always plow and never sow?
Is he forever cultivating the soil and never planting?
25 Does he not finally plant his seeds—
black cumin, cumin, wheat, barley, and emmer wheat—
each in its proper way,
and each in its proper place?
26 The farmer knows just what to do,
for God [...]

Listening to voices unlike yours

July 8th, 2008, 2 Comments

I ran into a Calvary Chapel pastor’s blog post that referenced the article I write for Next-Wave a while back. It’s a fun blog to read, as I think that the author thinks he and I are way more different in our theology and our practices than I suspect we are (even though I also [...]

Featured on Next-Wave

June 20th, 2008, No Comments

Very fun news – Bob and Charlie and the crew at Next Wave.magazine picked up the article that I wrote here titled “Things They Tell Church Planters That Are Simply Wrong” and which has been generating a good deal of traffic and comments.
The article is in the current issue (June 2008, #114), and a direct [...]

Exegeting a Community

June 13th, 2008, No Comments

One of the foundational beliefs for Ray Bakke and for Bakke Graduate University is that location, place, physical context, city, georgraphy – space is important. Ray writes in “Street Signs: A New Direction in Urban Ministry” (Ray Bakke, Jon Sharpe) about the process of doing this work. Here is a handout from my Overture I [...]

United By Faith – Section 2, Multiracial Congregations in the United States

May 30th, 2008, 2 Comments

I blogged a bit about race here last week as I began to read “United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race”. Here is my summary of Section 1 of the book.
Section 2 is “Multiracial Congregations in the United States”.
Chapter 3 – Congregations and the Color Line (1600-1940)
British colonists [...]

United By Faith – Section 1, Multicultural Christianity in the Bible

May 19th, 2008, No Comments

I blogged a bit about race here last week as I began to read “United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race”
I’ve just finished Section 1 of the book, and rather than rushing onward (grad school reading pace is so different than real reading pace) :), I want to [...]

Things They Tell Church Planters That Are Simply Wrong

May 5th, 2008, 16 Comments

Next weekend, Mother’s Day, marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of the church that my family planted and that a year ago closed its doors (for the second but final time).

I’ve been thinking lately about the process of starting new churches. A lot of that thinking comes from me knowing that I still have [...]