Playing Fair When Dancing with Dinosaurs
Before you read this post, please burn into your brain that I was one of the first authors to shoot a warning shot across the bow of the institutional church by questioning its effectiveness and validity. In 1993, I wrote the book Dancing with Dinosaurs, in which I said the present form of institutional Christianity […]
Heresy Today and How to Respond
I was just getting ready to do a blog on the comparison of heresy in the first few centuries to that of today since today is so much like the 1st century, when I received a post from one of the members (Anne) of our Advanced Leadership Forum asking if our group had seen the […]
A Multi-Site Church Road Trip
Leadership Network is doing a blog tour for the new book, A Multi-Site Church Road Trip, by Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird. I have been asked to participate with the bloggers. I was asked to submit a question to which the three would respond. Here is my question to Geoff, Greg, and Warren. […]
More about the Missional Church
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the growing use of the word “missional” to describe the church. I’ve seen so many definitions of the word that it makes my head spin. Still, I offer you another definition in the hopes of simplifying the issue. A missional church is a baptized community of people called […]
Wish Me a Merry Christmas – I Dare You
There seems to be a movement underfoot to discourage people from wishing one another a Merry Christmas. “We don’t want to offend anyone, so let’s water it down and just say ‘Happy Holidays’.” Hmmmmm. Something’s wrong with this picture. To wish someone a Merry Christmas is the same as proclaiming the “good news of great […]
The New Evangelicals
In my early years as a pastor (from the 60s through the 80s) I remember people saying that liberals focused on social justice mostly to the exclusion of evangelism, and evangelicals focused on evangelism mostly to the exclusion of social justice. In fact, many of the theological differences during those years were crystallized in the dichotomy between social justice and […]