Church growth and discipleship

As I narrate from my story at South Melbourne Restoration Community (now simply called Red), one of the paradigm changes I/we had to undergo was to be to break the hegemony that church growth thinking held over our imaginations and practices. I say this not because God has not and does not use church [...]

So, what on earth is the church?

For many of us, church has been something we have lived with and around for much of our lives. And this is a good thing, because the community of faith is meant to be a living community of God’s people. But the problem is that hanging around it for so long we get to [...]

More of the same?

Back to our dialogue on The Forgotten Ways. Whatever we might say about movements, it must be said in the context of the decline of the church as-we-know-it in the West at the dawn of the 21st Century. The fact is that we face a real dilemma with the declining appeal of variations [...]

Scratch and smell (or a sample chapter or two)

The publishers have selected the introduction and chapter one of The Forgotten Ways as a sample of the book for download and distribution. The introduction will not be strange to those who have been engaging on this blog for a while now, but chapter one will be entirely fresh. It tells the story [...]

The six elements of Apostlic Genius

In the previous post on The Forgotten Ways, I described how my journey to writing the book starting with me repeatedly asking myself the question, ‘how did they do it? How did the Early Christian Movement (and in our day, the Underground Chinese Church) achieve ‘spontaneous expansion?’ How did they grow exponentially, against [...]

An ancient piece of contemporary advice

Came across this fantastic piece of organic wisdom recently…
Act without doing: work without effort.
Think of the small as large and the few as many.
Confront the difficult while it is still easy.
Accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.
–Lao Tze

Has real significance when it comes to thinking about our tasks, and our various communities, [...]

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single question

OK, I want to return to our discussion on the new book. To get to the heart of the material, I have to introduce you to the question that obsessed me for about 3 years non-stop - the question that started my personal quest and culminated in the wrting of The Forgotten Ways. This [...]

Some serious learning going down!

I and a colleague Lance Ford, are developing a fantastic online training course using a ‘learning cafe’ environment. It will be a great resource for missional/apostolic leadership. Seriously, I have just been introduced to the technology involved and I have honestly never seen anything like it. There is a virtual classroom with data projection, [...]

The missional power of goodness

My mates at onmovements.com have got a copy of Rodney Stark’s new book, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. I have not read this book, but am very appreciative of Rodney Stark’s socio-historical insights on movements. In his The Rise of Christianity (which I [...]

More of the same?

“The fact that you have started reading this book will mean that not only are you interested in the search for a more authentic expression of ecclesia (the NT word for church), but you are in some sense aware of the dramatic changes in worldview that has been taking place in general culture over the [...]

Church planter’s reading list

Jordon Cooper from resonate.ca has developed a suggested reading list on church planting by many gurus on the subject. Its a good list but I must admit that I did find it somewhat surprising. Some of the books have nothing to do at all with church planting as a specific missional approach and practice. [...]

A postcard from the edge

One of the exciting things happening in the missional church is the fact that it is taking the issues of social justice very seriously. Mike Frosts’ fantastic new book Exiles bears that out. Actually, some take offense at this. For whatever reason I cannot understand. Anyhow, Forge Victoria is hosting an interactive night [...]

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