Glorious Mud

I was asked to write a blog for the Acts 29 website to help promote the upcoming boot camp in Chicago.  By the way, it's on September 15 and 16, 2011, and you should consider going!  You can get info here .  Lauren and I will be there helping with leading, facilitating, and assessing and we would love to see you there.  I guarantee you will be challenged with a lot to think about. So, I wrote the blog - and I know the way these things go.  It may or may not actually get published over at Acts 29, but I thought I would share it here.  It was fun to take a little time and remind myself of God's blessings over the last 6 years! So, here it is: ........ God’s plan has a way of making perfect sense in hindsight – even if it is completely unpredictable on the front side of things. In 2005, I attended my first Acts 29 boot camp in Edwardsville, IL.   I had never been to Edwardsville.   I had only recently heard of Acts 29 .   I def...

The book of Acts has 28 chapters - and it is the history of the birth and spread of the early church.  The book of Acts ends the only way it could - open-ended.  Acts starts telling us a story that is still going on today - it is the story of God calling lost and broken people to himself to heal them and restore them to hope.  It is the story of God building his church. Acts 29 exists to equip and advance the cause of church planting.  In order for Trailhead to become a member, I had to go through a series of steps (writing position papers, multiple conversations, and a formal interview of both Lauren and myself) in which my character, my calling, and my skill set were examined.  In addition, our church's theology (what we believe about God) and our core missiology (how we live out our faith with those outside the church) were tested to see if they were sound and in line with the Bible. This week, Trailhead formally became a member of the Acts 29 network...

You read that right - the Journey Metro East, a video venue of The Journey in St. Louis, MO, is hiving off into a church plant. Last night at our Campus Meeting, Darrin Patrick, Bob Bickford, and I cast vision for what is coming for the Journey Metro East: we are going to become an autonomous church plant.  The executive elders and I have been working toward this actively behind the scenes for the last year - and our campus leadership team and I have been at it hyper-actively for the last two months.  So it was great to be able to make it public to our people. Last night was an incredible flood of emotions for me.  Several people told me that I looked "giddy."  And, I think, that is an accurate description of how I felt.  God has made his will clear to me and the other elders and I am incredibly excited as I look forward to the continued unleashing of blessing as we make much of Jesus. But there were other emotions in there too.  I am a little sad and...

A good friend and gifted pastor, Jonathan McIntosh, recently launched a new web endeavor called ReThink Mission. JMac is one of the most missionally minded dudes I know and he has incredible insight into how to engage culture for the advancement of the gospel. So, do yourself a favor, and visit his new website. He is updating it daily and is landing some killer interviews and insightful topics. If you are a church planter, church leader, wannabe church planter or leader, take some time and read it. Rethink Mission

I was reading Scott Thomas's blog on The Ten Qualifications of a Church Planter over at Acts29 blogs - and wanted to pass it along to you as an excellent resource. A few sentences in his opening paragraphs caught me: Every church leader should be able to spot a church planter and then send him to plant as soon as he is ready. The problem I am seeing is that we are so desperate for good men that we are not sending them into the field. We take warriors and make them into administrative clerks. He followed up later with this: We prefer the men in our church to be mules. A mule does not act like a jackass and they are able to carry larger loads and endure longer than a horse. They are tamer than a jackass but do not seem to want to run like a stallion. I think many pastors prefer a mule to a stallion. Stallions are designed to run and not be penned up in a stable. We are generally afraid of stallions because we are afraid of our own masculinity, our leadership, and our "importanc...