I write this on an Amtrak train returning from a 4th of July weekend with my young adult son in New York City.  We are headed to DC for fireworks tonight before he flies home tomorrow.  He and I had great fun in New York.  I had never seen Times Square at 2 am, but when you travel with a 21-year old, you shift into a slightly different time zone.  Yesterday, after we watched the Yankees toast the Toronto Blue Jays (in about 97 degrees), we noticed that our subway train back to Manhattan was headed ultimately to Coney Island.  Neither he nor I had ever been to Coney Island, but we had read all kinds of stories and seen movies about it - so we said, “Let’s just stay on the train all the way to the beach,” About ninety minutes later (we were riding the local) we arrived in this large railway terminal on the lower coast of Brooklyn, with thousands of people pouring out of trains onto the beach and into the amusement parks of Coney Island. 

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“Beware ministry on the cutting edge; because on the cutting edge you bleed.”  I’m told this piece of advice was circulating more than a decade ago, in the church growth movement, among mega church staff people.  The idea was this — better to play it a bit safe when trying to grow a mega church.  Let someone else experiment.  Use the tried- and-true methods that are working to grow your church — and don’t take too many chances.  This advice may have worked in the 1990’s of fast growing suburban church planting; but in my world, the words take a different twist.

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Sometimes people ask us what new church starts is really all about. We have many answers, but all of them lead to the fact that healthy new churches make more disciples, more young disciples and more diverse disciples who transform the world. Recently we heard that one of our newer church starts got the attention of their community by challenging all local churches to a food drive smack down (our words, not theirs).

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My friend David Arruda is a pastor in Massachusetts.  Many years ago, David was running several businesses at the same time.  He had gathered a management team of folks with a highly structured approach to business.  They constantly tried to slow down decisions, seeking to run every idea by senior management before people on the front lines could act.

One day, determined to teach another style of leadership, David took a marker and wrote the following words on a whiteboard: “Have fun.  Take risks.  Go fast.”  The next day, the mantra had caught on and he found it on whiteboards all over the building.  When David transitioned into pastoral ministry, he held on to this winning mantra, adding the words, “for Christ’s sake.”

Today I am working with David to develop a network of home fellowships sponsored by 14 mainline congregations south of Boston.  We are seeking to develop an approach to building new faith communities that serve and disciple persons who are largely beyond the reach of the staid, historic congregations who are sponsoring this effort.  We are borrowing ideas from other Christian groups and applying them in ways that are still very new for mainline protestants in the USA. (more…)

I was leading a a focus group with a United Church of Christ congregation talking about missional outreach when a middle-aged woman directly across the table from me blurted out, “I could never bring myself to invite anyone to church.  I am just not comfortable doing that!”

She dared to say out loud the oft unspoken (and not so mysterious) reason why so many churches do not reach their potential. She spoke for millions of American church-goers who feel that inviting people to church is an invasive and highly uncomfortable thing to do. However, in this case, the woman added that she shares in the church’s annual mission trip to help Mayan peasants in Guatemala - and that the experience each year is so life-changing that she cannot help but talk to her friends about it.  So she persuaded one of her friends to come on the trip this last year.  Her friend was similarly moved.  The friend made some great friendships with church members on the trip, and ended up joining the church.  I looked the woman across the table directly in the eyes and smiled, saying, “Guess who’s an evangelist and she doesn’t even know it?”  (more…)

I travel all over the country working with Christian leaders.  Everywhere I go people ask great questions.  Often I start a seminar by asking people to write down the one or two most pressing questions about ministry that they have brought to that event.  There is power in getting focused, and just being able to verbalize a question that cuts to the heart of one’s journey.

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Ralph Davis is about to build a go-kart for his son. It is Christmas Eve at 10 pm. This continues a family tradition at least five decades old of tinkering in the garage until 4 am on Christmas morning, playing Santa’s elf. Except as Ralph opens the box with go-kart parts, he notices that the directions are for …. a lawn mower.

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