In my high school English lit class, we were taught that for both understanding and writing stories, we needed to apply the maxim 5 W's and an H.  The reasoning behind this is so that a full picture is either understood or painted.  I've been chewing on how these things relate to the concept and practice of church planting and have a few thoughts. Here is how I see these each relating: Why are you planting a church? What do you believe about the church's identity and mission in the world? Where will you plant? Who will be involved? How will you go about planting? When will you plant? I've realized that many mistakes can be avoided (or many lessons learned) by focusing first on the why and what, before concerning yourself with the who, how and whens of the matter.  While these things are certainly part of the picture, if these lenses are put in the wrong order, I believe it makes the whole endeavor fuzzy, like trying to see the letters in an eye exam when the doctor changes the way the lenses distort the image. Here, in brief, are how I see some of these improper focuses leading to a weakening of the work of ...

In a previous post on church planting, I shared some of the reasons we struggled to see a healthy biblical community come to fruition.  In light of these (if not because of them), I want to share what is next for us on the horizon as far as ministry goes. First, Sherry (my wife) and I have a renewed sense of both passion and vision for being the church in the place and among the people God has sovereignly placed us.  We know that there is no such thing as a "perfect" church this side of perfection, but we are committed to being part of biblical church, which we believe to not only be possible, but normative, for healthy Christians.  While this passion and vision are not unique to us,  we do desire to make them particular in our time and place through establishing a network of simple churches (gospel communities) based in Metro Detroit and as part of our command to go into all the nations. Second, we are developing strategic biblical partnerships with a couple of local churches that are sincere in their desire to support our call to church planting. There is an apostolic pattern of being both assessed ...

In August of 2006, I opened up to the Gospel of John 12:24-26 in front of a small group of believers in my home.  I read the following words: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Little did I know I wasn't just explaining a text, but I was foretelling the future of the group.  I described how we could make all of the plans we wanted, but if God had in it for our small group at the time to die in order to give birth to something else we hadn't even imagined yet, that must be ok. Less than 2 years later, after several changes and adaptations, we indeed had to come to the conclusion that a death had occurred, but hopefully not without giving the hope of life. I won't go into great detail, but what I will offer here is a brief list of some of the key reasons I believe our 'church plant' failed (emphasis on the 'our' and 'church plant'). I do this to both warn potential church planters who may read this and to ...