“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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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 think it’s one of the most challenging passages in the New Testament. In Luke 15 Jesus tells a very long tale about two brothers. One is dutiful, attentive, trustworthy, steady and predictable. He’s the older brother. He does and says the right things. He’s the “good” son. The younger brother, in comparison, is impulsive, restless, seeking, selfish, and unpredictable. He’s no good (compared to the older brother)!  (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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I was twelve years old and glued to our television set as grainy images were beamed onto the screen of humanity’s first step onto the surface of the moon. It was 1969 and the crew of Apollo 11, Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin, had me pinned to the edge of my seat. I was hooked! From that moment on I wanted to be an astronaut. As a kid I built model rockets (remember Estes?) and launched them high into the air. I infected my two sons with this “space bug.” Every now and then we’ll dust off the stuff and send another rocket skyward. Living in central Florida has afforded me many opportunities to watch the space shuttle leave and return to earth. There is nothing like being just a few miles away from the launch pad—the roar of liftoff. Goose bumps just like when I was twelve. (more…)

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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All across America, the cabinet meetings have started. I am not talking about the Obama cabinet, but sixty-some-odd gatherings of United Methodist district superintendents with their bishops to begin the annual process of appointing tens of thousands of pastors to places of service in 2009-10. The majority of those cabinets will not appoint a single person to start a new congregation in their territory this year - an odd thing in a land where the population steadily is growing and changing, and an even odder thing in a denomination that came to dominance in the 1800s by starting one new church every day, on average. The low rate of new church development is one of the leading reasons for the unrelenting shrinkage of United Methodism as a movement in the United States.

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