Attractional Church
We covered this territory back in March of 2007 when I was reading a book called The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. It’s come up again in light of our recent conversation. Plus, we’ve added so many new readers to this blog in the last two-and-a-half years, it might be beneficial to revisit topics like this every so often. JamesBrett has been hinting around this thought, but let’s go ahead

The 52 Greatest Stories of the Bible — On Sale
My heads up agent just alerted me to the fact that Christian Book Distributors has the book on sale for $11.99 now — which is almost as cheap as I can get it from my publisher! Here’s the link if you want to get some early Christmas shopping done. Oh, and if you order it, you can mail it to me before December 11. I’ll sign it and send it back before Christmas. How about that for a deal?

In Search of a Silver Bullet
Every generation it seems wants a silver bullet. They want the secret formula for instant church growth. Do this. Say that. Play these songs. Preach those sermons. And…voila! You’ll be doing four Sunday services just like the big boys do! Yeah…it doesn’t work like that. The most effective strategy (ironically, it’s the most biblical strategy as well) for evangelism will always, always, always be one-on-one, one person telling another person what God has done in and through his life. Sorry. Jesus told his followers to be witnesses — to just get out there and tell folks what they’d seen and hear

When It Stops Working
I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time among the cool churches (you know…Willow Creek and Saddleback and North Point and all their buddies who make fun of churches like yours). I’ve gone to their conferences and listened to their pastors. Some of those guys are my friends even. And, while I have some pretty serious reservations about some of what they’re doing (especially video church), you can’t deny the fact that they do evangelism pretty well. These churches baptize hundreds of people each year by creating a safe place for people to bring their spiritual questions and explore their faith. They’ve figured out ways of presenting timeless, biblical tr

Vacation Bible School
It’s November, and the dog days of summer are a distant memory now. So, I figure that gives us a chance to discuss something in a calm and reasonable manner. At least that’s what I hope. I’d like to discuss…Vacation Bible School. It’s no overstatement to say that Americans may very well constitute the largest unchurched people group outside of India and China. As many as 240 million Americans are unsaved, unchurched and unevangelized, and that number is growing. Now, I understand that the best programming in the world can’t lead a person to conviction and conversion – people have this notoriously stubborn thing called their sin nature