Food for Thought: New Logo Edition
Every week here at Pursuing Glory I try to bring together the best posts I’ve found that will equip the end-times church to operate in her God-ordained destiny. These are the best blogs, articles, books and other resources related to our purpose here at this site. Feel free to visit, comment, and make use of the resources found at each site.
So call me crazy, but I’m really excited this week to include a new piece of artwork here on the blog that I think better compliments the “Food for Thought” feel. The previous graphic with some guy advertising grilled brain was fun, but maybe it wasn’t quite the “brain food” graphic that I was looking for. Let me know what you think of the new picture. Now, with no further ado, your links for the week:
Greek and Hebrew Evangelism Probably the biggest thing that holds back many in the church from missional lifestyles is the fear and confusion surrounding sharing their faith. This article by Ross contrasts a confrontational, idea-based form of evangelism (Greek) with a conversational, listening-from-the-heart style of evangelism (Hebrew). Ross’ message is that evangelism can be as easy as pointing out to those we know and love the places in their life where God is already working. I think this style has a lot of merit and it would be interesting to know how this has worked out practically in the lives of others. You can catch other great articles from Ross over at thejesusvirus.
Felix: Before and After This post by Keith Giles looks at the writings of a first century pagan and his view of the church before and after his conversion. While his words before his conversion sound harsh and his thoughts after his conversion sound more complimentary, the interesting thing about both accounts is that they each describe how the people of God should live and operate together. Get this at-once-unbeliever, now believer’s take on the the first century Jesus movement. Keith is a profound and challenging blogger that you can read more from at Subversive1.
Missional House Churches in America Part 1 Probably the biggest news of the week on the house church front is that the house church movement is big news! Several articles came out in major newspapers talking about the move of many Americans into house churches. J.D. Payne, a researcher and mission-minded theologian who has written and researched the house church movement, looks at the missional impact of this flourishing house church movement. J.D.’s research is deep and thorough. His case studies highlight the true potential of God’s people living out Christianity together. He blogs regularly at Missiologically Thinking.
TV Series on “The Kingdom” This is more of an announcement than an article you can read, but it’s exciting none-the-less. Those of you who have read Houses That Change The World or the Starfish Manifesto know that Wolf has a serious heart for the Kingdom. An understanding of the Kingdom of God has to be central to anything that God is birthing in this hour. Wolf has put together a series of television broadcasts that will be aired in Finland and then repackaged for distribution. Check out the broadcasts and stay up to date with Wolf and his wife Mercy at While We Slept.
Photo Credit: Design Probes – Food for Thought by centralasian.
Food for Thought: Church Planting Movement Edition
Every week here at Pursuing Glory I try to bring together the best posts I’ve found that will equip the end-times church to operate in her God-ordained destiny. These are the best blogs, articles, books and other resources related to our purpose here at this site. Feel free to visit, comment, and make use of the resources found at each site.
Most of the following links are connected with the idea of seeing multiplying church movements birthed in the Earth. We’ll talk more about multiplying church movements shortly, but for now let’s just say that for the harvest at the end of the age to become a reality, God will need to begin to birth multiplying church movements here in the West and in the nations of the Earth. Their reality will fuel and sustain the great harvest.
Cesar, Man of Peace Ross Rohde gives the readers of his blog a down-to-earth current example of how men/women of peace can aid church planting. I’ve heard (and experienced) that when Jesus leads you to a person of peace, you can’t help but start a church. Starting a church without a person of peace is incredibly more difficult. In all of my reading, this is the most down-to-earth description of how an individual finds a person of peace and establishes a church. Ross blogs regularly at thejesusvirus.
To the Fourth Generation You really can’t beat first-hand information from people who are on the front lines of any ministry. Steve Addison got a chance to sit down with church planters who have seen the churches they’ve planted start daughter churches, granddaughter churches, and great-granddaughter churches. He combines all the insights from that time and presents the common themes in a three page PDF document. It’s a treasure. Steve blogs regularly about Christian movements at Movements That Change the World.
Passing It On and What is Sequentialism and Why Does it Prevent Multiplication? These are both posts by Felicity Dale, who with her husband gives leadership to the annual House Church conference that pulls together many house churches and house church movements in the nation. In “Passing It On” Felicity writes about the need for the taught to teach others in order to see church planting movements birthed. “What is Sequentialism and Why Does it Prevent Multiplication” focuses in on how our need to have everything right in a church or movement before we expand is often the reason why no growth happens. Both of these articles are extremely worth your time and can be found at Felicity’s blog Simply Church.
A Lesson in Unity Here, Kevin Matthews looks at the behavior of fire ants and how they swarm and then relates it to our need to operate in the same spirit of unity. This article at first might not seem very closely related to church planting movements but I can assure you that at their core, church planting movements operate in this way. They are led and built up by five-fold ministries that encourage this unified swarming. This is a great picture of how Christ builds an at once individual and yet unified body. You can check out more of Kevin’s writing at Kevin and Lorna’s Daily Devotional.
Photo Credit: Brain Food by The Wandering Angel at Flickr.
Moving Forward
Milestones are interesting things. They tell you where you are, they tell you a little bit about how far you’ve come, but they tell you very little about where you’re going. The last post for me was a bit of a milestone. For whatever reason, I felt like I had to do something special for the 200th post on the blog. That something special took me a lot longer than I had planned—the better part of six months!
Now the question becomes, where do we go from here? And in a lot of ways, that’s what this period of not posting has been about. It was more than just time spent writing and working…it was reflecting on where this blog has been and where it is going. Moving forward, you’re going to see me focus in on a lot of topics that came to the surface when I wrote Why You Come to Pursuing Glory: The Outpouring of the Spirit, Apostolic Leadership, Organic House Churches, and Night and Day Prayer. But my hope is that the blog goes beyond just me writing about these topics. My hope is that this becomes a gathering point for people who believe these themes were designed to work together. I’m also going to remain true to my commitment to be real and talk about my life here as well, because I still believe it’s crucial to what we’re doing to be open, honest, and real.
For all of this to happen some changes are necessary. The biggest change you will see is I’m going to start posting different blogs in different categories to help people who come here find content that is useful to them. For those of you who come to hear about the happenings of our lives, there will still be plenty of posts on life stuff, reflection, and maybe a picture or two of the kids. You’ll see all of these posted under the category “Blogs.” For those of you that use this blog as a resource or enjoy hearing about what Jesus has been speaking to me, I will continue to post those posts here as well. You’ll find those under the “Articles” category. I’ll also be forcing the most recent “Articles” post to stay at the top of the blog, so that people who are looking more for content can find it quickly and easily.
There will also be several new types of posts coming to the blog. If you liked the last post, my hope is to continue from time to time to produce Christ-exalting writings that are more like poetry and stories than resource manuals. You’ll find these sorts of posts in the “Writings” category. And, in an effort to begin building not just a community, but a community that is building up all of its members, I’m going to start posting in a category I’m calling “Resources.” The goal of this category will be to point you to significant resources I’m finding out on the web, give away free resources that I’m beginning to develop myself, and update the community that is forming here on changes to the blog. This sort of post, for example, would be filed under “Resources.”
But none of this matters much if a community of like-minded individuals doesn’t begin to dig deep and encourage one another in the things that the Lord is doing. To do that I want to suggest a couple of simple steps you could take to help:
- Comment on the posts you like or disagree with. Not everything I write will interest you. But some of it will. And some of it will make you furious. I value discussion, so if you’re moved by a post in a good or bad way or you have something to contribute to what has already been said, leave a comment.
- If you’re a blogger, join with me in this conversation. If you see something here that provokes you to write a blog, let me know about it. I would love to link to what you’ve wrote, and see the conversation go farther than just my little corner of the internet.
- If you haven’t yet, subscribe to Pursuing Glory somehow. If you’re not particularly technologically inclined, hit the “Email Subscription” button on the sidebar of the blog. If you’re more into computers or you’re daring, you could subscribe to this blog using a feed reader. I found a great video explaining the process here. Let’s face it. Life is busy and it’s easy to fall out of the loop. Either of these tricks will help you stay involved in what’s going on.
- Finally, give me suggestions. I’m certainly not the only voice or the only one talking about the things that we cover here. Please point me in the direction of others who are both resources and voices for the sort of things we discuss.
Most of these are simple actions, but they will help all of us begin to move forward in the direction the Lord is taking us. Thanks for listening.
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