Churches across the United States are shrinking. In fact, every single fellowship, including Churches of Christ, is on the decline. It used to be said that healthy churches grow. In today's climate, with a shrinking percentage of the population being Christian, healthy churches may not necessarily grow. They may shrink due to the overall decline of Christianity in our culture. 

It will take more than just church health to grow churches. It will take more than…

Before Jesus went to the cross he said to his disciples, he talked about the love that disciples ought to have for one another:

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn. 13:14-15; cf. 1 Thess. 4:9-10; 2 Thes. 1:3; Heb. 13:1; 1…

I apologize to my readers for the lack of posts this week. I have had fever, a sinus infection, and bronchitis. Not fun.

Anyway, I wanted to write a bit about blessing others. The concept of blessing people in daily life is something that goes back to the Abrahamic covenant, where God blessed Abraham so that he could be a blessing to others (Gen. 12). This is…

Below are most all of the passage in John that use the word "sent." I have included all those referring to Jesus, with a few that refer to John the Baptist. (Thank you to www.Biblegateway.com for help with this.) Missio means "to send," and thus being missional is about being "sent" into the world to take up the mission of…

I just finished reading The Missional Church in Perspective, a work which outlines currents trends in thought in the missional conversation since the publication of Missional Church. It is an excellent reflective…

Today I dropped by the Divine Children Christian Center, the daycare center that one of my small groups has adopted. One of our new converts, Cyndi Moncada, used to take her kids to this daycare center. As we teach people to follow Jesus, we teach them to take up Christ's mission of seeking the lost, serving the community, and sharing the good news. So when…

One of the things that postmodernism has taught us is the important of language. Somewhere in the 1980s I can remember when politically correct language started entering into mainstream consciousness. Blacks became African-Americans. Airline stewardesses became flight attendants. Chairman became chairperson. There was a growing awareness that language shapes and sometimes…

I found this article today entitled, Church buys apartment complex for intentional ministry. It is about a church in Greenville, NC, that had maxed out its 7 acre campus and its two worship services and three Sunday school. They still had significant building, so building a whole new campus someplace…

A few months ago, our group "adopted" the…

A Missional Gathering - High Pointe in the Park - Last night was our “High Pointe in the Park.” On this night we allowed McKinney High School to use our building for its baccalaureate while we headed out to Towne Lake park. This accomplished two things.

First, it let us be a servant to our community by letting them use our…

On Sunday, I will begin preaching through the book of John. As the missional crowd knows, John contains some of the most explicitly missional themes in the NT, including John 20:21, where Jesus says to his disciples, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

Recently, I sat down with a good elder friend of mine, and we went through the first 18…

The past couple of weeks I have gone to the Exponential conference and the Pepperdine lectures. Both events were filled with speakers saying the same thing--that we are losing people to the world in droves, and that the church must wake up, stop being inward-focused, and become outward-focused or "missional."

On this subject, I was also reading last week The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community by Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw. In this…

J esus said to his disciples, "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you" (Jn. 20:21). Being sent is a part of who and what God does.

The more that the missional understanding is taking hold, the more this understanding causes us to rethink all of our daily lives and church life and practice. Mission was once relegated to a side ministry of the church. In…

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the US government posted a $223 billion dollar deficit - in one month!! Republicans have been proposing $60 billion dollars in this year's budget, and Democratic lawmakers say that they can only cut $6 billion--which turns out to actually only be $4.7 billion dollars.

Unbelievable. Neither side…

In the new book, Right Here, Right Now, Alan Hirsch opens by talking about how missional movements begin. He says:

"This is how missional movements grow--through a group of people who have been changed by Jesus and are willing to put themselves on the line for his cause."

He then qutoes Seth Godin, saying, "Seth Godin, pop movements…

Missiologist Eckhard J. Schnabel, author of Early Christian Mission, says, “Jesus had worked as prophetic preacher and teacher, but contrary to the rabbinic model, he did not wait for people to come to him (although that happened as well); instead, he traveled through the towns, villages, and hamlets of Galilee (Mk. 6:56), encountering people where they lived and…

One of the major passages on spiritual formation, particularly within families, that is often pointed to is the "Shema":

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.^[…

In the their new book, Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission for Everyday People, authors Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford write this:

"It is impossible to be a missional church if we fail to be missional people. Otherwise, missionality is reduced to sponsored programs that centralize the life of the body of Christ, institutionalizing…

This week I  came across this book review of a new IVP book called, Walking Gently on the…

   Our work in…