Adrian Warnock asks: Should You be a Church Plant Leader? In it he gives video and a list of 20 questions that every church planter should ask. I was a church planter one, and I work with church planters now. This is a great inventory to add to the list.
Joshua Cody at Church Marketing Sucks has two great articles that speak to marketing and church.
- Nitpicking our Marketing (Is the breakfast served out of love or a marketing strategy?)
- Semi Automatic Assault Rifle offered as an incentive to visit church (What was that guy thinking?)
Mark Driscoll has been writing about Charles Spurgeon:
Evangelism
The hyper-Calvinists in his day disdained Spurgeon for his passion for lost people to meet Jesus and his continual offering of the gospel of grace to the masses, which led to the baptism of 14,692 converts during his ministry. Despite much mean-spirited opposition, Spurgeon never shied away from calling all people to repentance and used unconventional means, such as meeting in a public theater (not a church) and preaching from a stage (not a raised pulpit), in an effort to be more culturally relevant with his ministry style. Curiously, however, he forbade the use of choirs, organs, and other musical instruments in his church services.
Spurgeon has deeply impressed upon me the importance of always inviting people to repent of sin and trust in Jesus. He rightly shared God’s heart for lost people and his example reveals that one can believe in both election and evangelism, as the Apostle Paul did also. Too often those of us who are theologically reformed spend more time criticizing evangelistic methods than doing evangelism ourselves. I too consider myself something of a reformed evangelist and appreciate that Spurgeon shared a deep love for lost people that God used to save many lives.
Source: Spurgeon Prayed, Laughed, Cared, and Evangelized – Part 3
David Fitch writes 10 Ways to Engage the Poor in the Suburbs. He took the time to prayer-walk his neighborhood and it didn’t take him long to find ideas. The poor are not just in the inner city slums, or the rural outskirts of the countryside. They are indeed right around you. . . .
As we have been looking at houses, praying over the neighborhoods, seeking where we might buy a house, I have walked the neighborhoods trying to open my eyes to where mission could be engaged. I find the suburbs difficult for mission. The poor are so hard to find. Yet as I walked and prayed, I found my imagination stoked by the Spirit. Mission was all around the rhythms of this place. The poor could be found. Here are ten missional places I noticed . .. . . .
Gary Rohyrmayer finds Seven Surprising Facts of the American Church. Here is one.
The increase in churches is only ¼ of what’s needed to keep up with population growth.
- 3,000 churches close every year
- 3,800 new church starts survived
- Net annual gain: 800 new churches
- Net annual gain needed to keep up with population growth:10,000 new churches
California church reached out via Garbage:
First Christian Reformed Church in Bellflower CA reached out to its community in an unusual way in July (2007), arranging for six huge dumpsters along the road beside its building. Church members manned the dumpsters to help community members dispose of unwanted items. They also handed out information about the church. This marked the third time the church has partnered with the city to help clean up the community
Source: The Banner Magazine (www.thebanner.org), October 2007
On Friday’s, I usually share some of what I’ve been reading on other blogs that is of interest to me. Some of the material is integrated into our workshops, or into my mind, as this collection is like a journal for Evangelismcoach.org
There is no real theme other than evangelism, church growth, and things related to them. You’ll not find links to Obama and McCain insights, or gossip about Paris Hilton, or even a summary of Twitter and Facebook and their value of wasting time or connecting.
Doesn’t happen every Friday, but as there is enough to share.