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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Another Path 1 staff member and I recently spent a week traveling through parts of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference which includes Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Among the hundreds of well established churches there I learned of a couple new and innovative church starts that really captured my attention.

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One of the significant tasks of church leaders is to find, equip and deploy lay people to lead in creating new places for new people. If we are going to produce a multiplicative growth for the new church starts movement in the United States, engaging lay people in church planting is one of the paths to move forward.  We have this great opportunity and solemn responsibility, as leaders of our United Methodist denomination, to empower the lay people of our churches to get out from their church pews into the world to give witness to the amazing love of God by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ and participating in planting new churches.

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At the center of the blitz of new United Methodist church development that is swirling around Chicagoland, there is a village.  Actually, there are two. Read more » »

Confucius said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  Dr. Leo Marvin (“What About Bob” fame) said, “Baby steps, baby steps…”

On a cold weekend in January eighty-plus people took many steps from around the country braving threats of snow and ice to participate in our inaugural Coaching Forum in Nashville, TN. The evaluations we received from attendees were encouraging and educational. We did many things right and many right things! Overall 99% of participants said the event “exceeded their expectations.” That’s pretty amazing.  Baby steps…

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It’s been one of the most frequently quoted scriptures, “Without a vision the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:19) As church planters we have been well schooled in the virtues of casting a compelling vision. Wise planters do this well…and often! But there’s another side of this that requires equal diligence. I phrase it like this, “Without adequate funding the vision perishes.” Many a church plant has shriveled up and withered away because of a severe case of financial dehydration. Casting vision is easy. Gathering folks around that vision is exciting. Asking for money to support that vision is neither easy nor exciting (for many of us).

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