Obstacles to Church Planting Movements

Church Planting Movements are acts of God, but it’s amazing how much mankind is capable of interfering with them. As with most of God's works among us, He allows us to actively cooperate with Him or become obstacles—consciously or unconsciously—to His desired purposes. Missionaries involved in Church Planting Movements have identified several very human courses of action that tend to obstruct, slow or otherwise hinder CPMs.

Provocative thoughts on Church Planting Movements

What is a Church Planting Movement and what does one look like?  David Garrison investigated this question by studying church planting movements around the world.  His approach was to observe what God was doing and then to describe what he saw. 

In his pioneering book, “Church Planting Movements,” he defined a Church Planting Movement as follows:  “A Church Planting Movement is a [1] rapid multiplication [2] of indigenous churches [3] planting churches [4] that sweeps through a people group or population segment.”

Experiencing the power of the Gospel in community

We were not saved for isolation. We were saved into community. Through the cross of Christ, God made us family not only with himself, but also with everyone who trusts in Christ alone for eternal life. God has gathered under his roof an enormous crew of former rebels, and he has turned us into family.

While we look forward to worshiping Jesus as a family forever in his castle, our King and heavenly Father tells us not to wait until heaven to pursue each other. He tells us that now is the time to live in community together for the glory of his name, for the joy of our own souls, and for bringing more people into his kingdom (Heb. 10:24–25).

10 Simple Discipleship Truths

Last month Deborah and I were in Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan teaching Asian pastors, church-planters, and missionaries about discipleship and leadership. Same ole boring strokes, again. After our Sunday night session a young Indonesian leader asked, “how do you define discipleship?” Good question. Here’s my answer, and more.

The spiritual discipline that impacts everything

In our research behind Transformational Discipleship, we discovered that engagement in one particular spiritual discipline positively impacts engagement in every other spiritual discipline (giving, serving, sharing the gospel, fasting, praying, etc.). In other words, while the other spiritual disciplines are important, engagement in one of these (from a research vantage point) does not necessarily increase engagement in the others. But there is one spiritual discipline that increases activity in every other spiritual discipline.

3 critical elements of time for every leader

Time is one of the greatest assets of any leader. Learning to balance a leader’s time effectively is often a key in determining the level of success the leader attains. In my experience, every leader has three critical segments where they must invest their time on a regular basis.

Most leaders tend to do one of these especially well, so by default they spend most of their time on it, often to the neglect of the other two. All three are needed. Learning to balance a leader’s time in each of these three areas will greatly enhance the leader’s productivity, so the leader must discipline for the other two.

Here are the 3 segments of time every leader must consider:

7 New Year Resolutions that could Change the World

In the new year . . . let’s resolve.

Whether or not you do New Year resolutions, we could all stand to improve some things in our life. And, if we do, I’m confident we could also improve the life of others. In fact, with a whole lot of improving . . . it might become contagious . . . and we might just change the world.