Earlier this year, my friend, Ed Stetzer, planted a Grace Church in Hendersonville, TN. In addition to being a church planter, Ed is a missiologist, research expert, and prolific author and blogger. I imagine there’s added pressure, and not a small amout of scrutiny, when you’re a well-known missions and church-planting teacher, to plant successfully. I wish Ed and Grace [...]

In missiological terms, it’s called a “platform.” It’s how you enter into the community, what you do, how you present yourself, in order to make a connection. Many missionaries aren’t “missionaries” at all, but doctors, teachers, businessmen, artists, social activists. A good platform allows for natural interaction with the people to whom you’re ministering while leaving you with enough time [...]

PREVIOUSLY: The Counterintuitive Church Despite the Church’s current tendency toward extreme pragmatism, much of the life that Jesus calls us to is counter-intuitive. But that doesn’t seem to stop us from depending (almost entirely!) on our human logic when it comes to our missiology. Why is that? Why would we assume that a counterintuitive God would leave us to do [...]

“The first will be last,” Jesus said. “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” A quick perusal of Jesus’ words will turn up all sorts of instructions that don’t seem to line up with what we’d consider “common sense.” He told his followers to “Turn the other cheek” (didn’t He know about terrorism?) and to “Walk a [...]

Armchair missiologists of the world-  when deciding where to get involved in missions, don’t be distracted by what isn’t there. Let me explain. For far too long now, missions strategy has gone something like this: Start by finding where there are a lot of people who haven’t heard the gospel (or who don’t have access to the gospel, or who [...]

So here I am- a continent, three cultures, and two months since my last post. A lot has changed. For starters, I’m still working with the IMB. Our regional leadership has been a tremendous support as we’ve begun the “About Europe” meetings and worked to launch the Upstream Collective. My new job is to connect churches with the work in [...]

We often have people express interest in coming for a visit to “see” our ministry. Some are church planters from the States, some are pastors of existing churches, some are missionaries in other places. We’ve had seminary students write papers on us, journalists write articles about us, and at least one grade school kid interview us for a class project. [...]

As a missionary, I am tempted to lie on a regular basis. It may or may not surprise you to read that statement, but it’s true nonetheless. What’s more, I find the temptation strongest when I’m talking with a coworker, partner, or supporter. It all starts out innocently enough; someone asks, “How is your ministry going?” or “What are you [...]

God called me to missions in Western Europe by giving me a vision for what He could (would?) do among the people here. I was excited about being part of God’s interaction with the postmodern, postchristian people of Europe. I really believed that God was going to start a church planting movement here, and I trusted that He was going [...]

I recently read an interesting thing about Wal-Mart. It seems that in cities across the country, Wal-Mart stores are up-sizing from their regular old large retail centers to shiny new extra-large “Super Centers.” In many cases, these new stores are right next door or across the street from the old stores. The problem is that the distinctively Wal-Martian building design [...]