Searching for Meaning and Purpose...

After taking a couple days to look at fatherlessness (which is about a lack of community) I wanted to come back to this discussion of community as the church. When we talk about church, we most likely mean the building our congregation worships in. I know when my kids talk about "going to church," it means driving over to the church building proper. However, the conception the early believers had was far different! They didn't have a building, they didn't have paid staff, they didn't have respect or tax exempt status, and yet that was when everything was "on fire" (yes, I did just use that pun, try not to kill me for it!) as the Spirit had just come down and they were " adding to their number daily ." What made the church grow then versus now? Was it better cultural relevancy? Was it their social justice pursuits in aiding those " who had need "? Was it passionate people? Was it great coffee? Or is there something we overloo...

This morning began in an awesome way with around 40 students (standing room only and perhaps then some) at JumpStart. The whole idea is to provide a place with rocking music, food, fun, and a great start to the day with God's word. To see 40 kids come in almost a half hour before school to do that is incredible! Especially when we had around 20 last week. Doubling the numbers (or " adding to their numbers daily " to quote Acts) is a pretty good trend to have... Often, we equate success with size. If God is "blessing" a ministry or church, they should have abundant resources and be seeing tons of people coming in, right? I mean, shouldn't there be tons of Saddleback's and Life Church's and Willow Creek's and Fellowship Church's and North Point Community Church's if God is blessing other churches? Hmmm... This presents a problem. Jesus gave us orders to " go and make disciples " which means if we're not growing we...

Every once in a while a book comes along that reinforces some of the things you believed but allowed to fall by the wayside as you "did" church. Exponential by Jon and Dave Ferguson is one of those books. It's not tons of new ideas and information, but it's the reminder that those models you looked at in college/seminary and thought would work, then never implemented, really work and are a far better way to do things than what you are currently doing! The key to Exponential is simple: ever single member of the church is responsible for reproducing another (or many, many more) Christ-follower. Moreover, it is the number one job of the church to reproduce leaders who can reproduce themselves. I would go so far as to say that a church that grows by ones and twos (like our church, which gained 7 members last year yet was in the top three in our Presbytery...) is NOT healthy. The Fergusons are very clear in their definitions and details, perhaps because the book isn...