Photo Credit: ladybugbkt (Creative Commons) On May 23rd 2008, I became an American citizen. In a large gymnasium hastily converted into a courtroom, before a presiding judge and with all due pomp and circumstance, I pledged allegiance to my new country and was granted the rights and privileges that citizenship brings. It was a surprisingly moving ceremony punctuated by… Read More
I often get asked the question, “I’m a pastor. How can I support myself if I leave professional ministry?” A workplace chaplain is one possibility. Our company uses a workplace chaplain–not just for our employees, but if appropriate, we also make one available to our clients. Michael Tummillo is a workplace chaplain. Here, he describes… Read More
I’ve been studying the different characters that appear in the Book of Acts recently, starting with Paul. I’ve often puzzled over apparently contradictory passages from Acts and Galatians that talk about what Paul did immediately after his conversion–whether or not he visited the apostles in Jerusalem. As I revisited this question, I remembered a book… Read More
Many people prayed for Jose when I blogged about his extraordinary story here and here. I’d like to give you an update. It’s now 8 months since those events took place. Rosaura, Jose’s mom, is still completely free from her 30 year crack and drug addiction problems. God is doing some beautiful things in her life.… Read More
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A church by any other name…
Brian used to host a Bible study group of 17 “unchurched” people in his home. Brian’s a chef and people love his food. They’d sing, read the Bible and talk. The pastor of his traditional church put the kibosh on it, however, because it was outside of his programs and control. So Brian did stop… Read More
The word, “missional” has become something of a buzz-word over recent years. Several friends such as Linda Bergquist and Alan Hirsch were involved in writing a Missional Manifesto which was published last year to help describe the term. Here’s the first sentence from the manifesto: God is a sending God, a missionary God, who has called His… Read More
The term, organic, means natural, nonchemical, living, and alive. When applied to church, it refers to something that grows naturally. Two people have popularized the name, organic church within the simple/organic/house church world. Neil Cole was the first one to do so with his superb book, Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, which God has used to… Read More
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What’s in a name? Simple church
Why the term, “simple church”? We love the story that gave the title to our book,The Rabbit and the Elephant, now republished in paperback as Small Is Big!: Unleashing the Big Impact of Intentionally Small Churches. It goes like this: Imagine you take two elephants, for our purposes, a male and a female, and you lock… Read More
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What’s in a name? House church
Very occasionally, I experience the almost surreal experience of being the person learning most from what I am teaching. The context in this particular instance: I was part of a team that was training people in a country hostile to the Gospel in how to identify the person of peace and start multiplying simple organic… Read More
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What is church?
The New Testament uses a number of different pictures of church: church is Christ’s body (Rom 12:5); it is a temple built with living stones (I Pet 2:5), it is a family (Eph 2:19). The metaphor of family is very helpful. Family is neither a building nor an event. Healthy families will get together often,… Read More