Many missiologists, mission-minded church leaders, and practitioners have talked about the church engaging in the seven spheres of society. To…
As you’ve already heard by now, the pandemic has raised many questions for the church in North America and has revealed, both, the strengths and weaknesses of how we think about mission and church. We may be moving from what has been primarily a Church Growth paradigm for church planting in North America to what
Many dramatic transformations are occurring all around us. Our world will never be the same again. How we work, study, shop, relate, play, and rest have been permanently changed. In light of these changes, I want to share a couple of missiological ideas and provide some city-level kingdom collaboration for the near future. The recent
Jesus pictures a vital vignette for such a time as this: “Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.” (Luke 9:49-50) Jesus reminds
We need to rethink three key themes in order to make church planting churches normative in the future: Rethink ecclesiology Rethink complexity Rethink pathways Here’s what I mean. As leaders, we should always be carrying out aggressive assessment under the Spirit’s guidance in order to steward resources at our disposal. The Covid-19 moment provides a
We’re rapidly approaching a new stage in the COVID-19 pandemic that we might call the mid-term. Roughly defined, this is the span of time between this fall and early 2021. There are a couple of principles that I think are critical for you if you are going to develop leaders who are equipped to navigate
Persons also belong to societies, and anthropologists have long noted and studied the social institutions found in every culture. These social institutions together enable a society to grow and thrive but also to dominate and control. The first institution is that of association, which is the systems by which people connect to each other. We
Like you, I’m experiencing and witnessing a cultural revolution in our country in the midst of a global pandemic. As a missiologist, I’ve been researching and writing about what it means to engage in meaningful gospel conversations in a 21st-century secularized context. Eighteen months ago, in an effort to explore the topic of evangelism and
There are four key, near-term realities that can help us think through how we should respond with missionary intentionality in the present. First, we have the opportunity to think through ways that people most naturally gather. Sociologists say that people do this in several basic ways: (1) Shared Identity—the same language, culture, or age group;
The work of community engagement and organizing has become a crucial skill for church planting teams. During the pandemic, church leaders were faced with not only asking how their churches were doing but also how their communities were doing. Now to consider the theme of Holistic and Locally Present Engagement in the Long-Term, let’s begin with