Trevin Wax, has written a helpful book that's generating a lot of good discussion. I'm happy to have Trevin on the blog today, answering a few questions about his book, Holy Subversion. It's a great book that challenges us all to live a distinctly Christian life, one that is truly subversive. After you read the interview, stick around to talk with Trevin. He'll be hanging around the blog today to interact with us all.

What does it mean to live "subversively" for Christ?

Continue reading Trevin Wax: Holy Subversion.

Leadership, a division of Christianity Today, created the Golden Canon Awards-- the ten books of 2009 most valuable for church leaders. If you're looking to learn and enjoy reading, you'll appreciate this compilation. We were honored to see that Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them made the list as well. LifeWay just released more information on their news site.

Jason Hayes, Richie Stanley, and I wrote Lost and Found to help churches and ministry leaders.

First, we offer a detailed look at the four younger unchurched types. Next, we use our results from research to break some long established assumptions about how to effectively engage the lost. Then, we establish the importance that churched and unchurched young adults place on community, depth of content, social responsibility, and making cross-generational connections. Finally, we also tell the story of churches that are successfully reaching and keeping this generation.

In all of it, we're not just letting people know of the problem-- we're really striving to provide help. As we say in the introduction, it is not entitled Lost and We Just Wanted to Tell You. We called it Lost and Found because we want you to know that lost young adults are being found-- effectively engaged in our culture, coming to faith in Christ, and being incorporated into congregational life.

Order a hardback or get the unabridged audiobook if you're interested.

You can also listen to the audio from my recent talk at an Acts 29 quarterly meeting in Saint Louis where I give a brief overview of the data in the book.

Vince Antonucci is the founder and lead pastor of Verve, an innovative new church for the unchurched on the Las Vegas strip. Vince's passion is creatively communicating biblical truth to help people find God. He is also the author ofI Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt.

Vince is also part of The Verve Foundation, which does community service to meet needs on and around the Vegas Strip.

His new book, Guerrilla Lovers, is another encouragement to the church to love in "deed and truth." I was happy to have the chance to ask Vince a few questions about the book. He'll be on the blog today answering your questions in the comments.

In September Brent Thomas, pastor of Church of the Cross in Peoria, AZ, took issue with a 9 Marks review of Jim Belcher's Book, Deep Church. Brent saw the review by Greg Gilbert as not only "snarky," but also unfair. In fact Gilbert's review actually received a response from Belcher himself on Trevin Wax's blog. There Belcher explained how Gilbert had somehow missed the point of his book. In his blog post Brent wondered if there was something of a growing rift within Reformed Evangelicalism related to the issue of the "missional church."

Just last week Brent's suspicions seem to have been confirmed through another 9 Marks publication by Jonathan Leeman. Leeman's article, "Is the God of the Missional Gospel Too Small" is troubling in that he argues missional thinkers place a heavy emphasis on social justice that moves the church away from a proper emphasis on the gospel. Brent explained,

If you're online and read blogs then you probably know Adrian Warnock. Adrian is a Christian writer, preacher and part of the Jubilee Church, London, UK leadership team for more than ten years. His new book, Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything, addresses the great hope of the Christian faith; that Jesus died-- and rose from the dead! Do we need another book written on the resurrection? Well, let's be honest. How many books have you read on this most central doctrine of our faith? Not only is this a book that needed to be written, it is a book you need to read. Check out the interview with Adrian below, and be sure to jump in engage him in the comments as he'll be hanging with us to talk through the issues.

Why did you decide to write about the resurrection?

Continue reading Adrian Warnock and The Resurrection.

J. D. Payne is a National Missionary with the North American Mission Board and an Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Planting in the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he directs the Church Planting Center (and, in this pic, he looks quite professorial).

He has served as a pastor of three churches in Kentucky and Indiana and has worked with five church planting teams. Over the years he has also served as a coach and mentor to numerous church planters. He is the author of three books: Missional House Churches: Reaching Our Communities with the Gospel, The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members , and his newest, Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting.

J.D. and I have been friends for a long time (he was once my grader when I taught at Southern) and later was my successor in that role. I know him well enough to tell you that his first name is "Jervis," which is pretty weird if you ask me. ;-)

His new book is very helpful and I now use it as one of my required textbooks when I teach church planting. So, I asked J.D. to talk about his new book and the state of church planting here on the front end of the 21st century. Read the interview, buy the book, and be sure to jump into the comments where J.D. will respond to your questions and comments.

With all of the books out there on church planting, what is the purpose of this one?

The purpose of this book is to provide a single, practical, work that addresses the biblical/theological foundations, several critical missiological principles, a few historical perspectives, and many contemporary issues related to church planting in the 21st century.

I have been involved in church planting in the U. S. for the past decade, including almost twelve years of teaching in the classroom. While there are many excellent books on church planting which I use, and will continue to use in the classroom (especially Planting Missional Churches J ), I wanted a book that was a good introductory work written for both church planters and other church leaders. Since there are many church planting books available, I had the benefit of drawing from the wisdom and experience of others when writing. The subtitle summarizes the book: "An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting"

I'm assuming that there is something significant about the words Global Church Planting. Am I correct?

Absolutely! This book is not a model-specific book for one particular context. While I have included a chapter on models of church planting, the focus is on understanding the principles that can be translated to cultures and societies throughout the world and how to make appropriate application of those principles to the field. While acknowledging my pastoral and church planting experience has been exclusively connected to the U. S., I worked hard to write with a much wider audience in mind.

What is unique about this book?

In addition to being a church planting book not specifically about a methods or models, but rather on the application of principles and contextualization of methods, there are two other unique aspects. First, I begin by ironically writing that ultimately the book is not about church planting, but Kingdom expansion through disciple-making. While there are many ways to plant churches, biblical church planting is evangelism that results in new churches. Therefore, a heavy focus of this book is about Kingdom growth through the multiplication of disciples, leaders, and yes, churches. As the gospel transforms lives and churches are planted, those new Kingdom citizens must set out to expand the Kingdom by living according to a Kingdom Ethic, thus transforming their societies with the gospel.

Second, this book is a call to understand that the primary biblical expression of the church planter is that the church planter is a missionary, doing evangelism, gathering new believers together to be the local church, and raising up elders from within (e.g., Acts 13-14) the community. In the western Church, especially in the U. S. and Canada, we have lost the New Testament understanding of the apostolic functions of church planters. For example, the majority of the church planting books and conferences geared toward a North American audience expect the person who plants will also pastor that church. While I'm not opposed to such a model (my experience has been with such a model) and support it in certain contexts, the weight of the Scriptures is on the church planter functioning more after an apostolic pattern--as a missionary who raises up pastors.

Can you give me a quick overview of the content?

Certainly. The book is divided into four major sections. The first, and most important section, is "Discovering Biblical and Theological Foundations". In this section, I spend much time addressing ecclesiology, the Holy Spirit, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare, Evangelism, Discipleship, and Leadership development as related to church planting. Section two is "Discovering Missiological Principles," and includes chapters related to multiplication strategy development, receptivity, contextualization, role of partnering churches, and church planting teams. The third section, "Discovering Historical Paradigms," examines the church planting activities of the Moravians across the globe and the Methodists and Baptists on the American frontier. The final section looks at several contemporary issues that church planters are facing. Chapters are devoted to family matters, church planting models, overcoming objections to church planting, urban church planting, tentmaking, the apostolic understanding of church planters, and church planting movements.

This is a massive work. Is this book just for the scholar?

I know. It can choke a horse! I use my personal copy as a stepstool when I change light bulbs!

Seriously. No. It is not just a textbook for the scholar. Prior to his death, Ralph Winter graciously wrote an endorsement for the book that relates to this matter. He wrote, "Books about on church planting. Few go into such sweeping and helpful detail. This is not a book written by an ivory tower scholar but by a true scholar activist." While comprehensive, this book is practical by nature. As I note in the book, church planters must be both outstanding theologians and missionaries. To be one without the other is a liability to the Kingdom. While much of this book involves a heavy amount of the theology and missiology undergirding church planting practice, I keep pushing the reader toward practical application of the book's contents. I partially make this push by concluding each chapter with several application-related questions for individuals and groups.

Church planting has really come into the spotlight in the last several years. Are we getting better at it? If we are, what do you think has been the key to that success. If we aren't, why?

I think we are improving in some areas and in other areas we are missing the mark. We have made great progress in the area of training guys to be pastors of newly planted churches. And I believe we will (and must) continue to advance in this area. Many church planting conferences today are not so much about church planting, but about how to lead the church you just planted. I believe such training provides very important information. I know that having served as a pastor of established churches and as a pastor in new churches the ministry contexts are very different, with each having their own unique challenges. I am very excited about what I am seeing in the area of pastoral training. I also think we have made great progress in the area of networks. We are now seeing church planters networking together for accountability, encouragement, and resourcing in ways that were not taking place ten years ago. A third advancement is in the area of raising the banner for the family. Today, unlike a decade ago, church planters are being strongly encouraged to guard their families. The reason I believe we are making significant progress in these areas is because church planters are approaching their ministries as both learners and as leaders. They are eager to learn from one another (believing that they do not have all the answers), while at the same time desire to share what they have personally learned in their journeys (believing that the Lord has given them some truth to pass along to assist others).

While we have grown in many areas, in other significant areas, we have made little progress. Even with all the discussions about being missional since the late 1990s, we still do not think and act like missionaries in our church planting endeavors. First, in the United States and Canada, in particular, we have an ecclesiology problem. There is too much of our cultural Christianity affecting our understanding of the local church, and not enough of the Bible. The greatest problem in church planting today is an ecclesiology problem. How we answer the question, "What is the local church?" will affect everything we do in church planting. We are attempting to plant churches that reflect too much of our cultural preferences and pragmatic tendencies, rather than biblical churches that are contextualized to the people. Second, and closely related to this problem, is the fact that we still do not understand that the primary biblical model for the church planter is that of a missionary who will plant churches and raise up pastors for those churches. There is little room for the missionary at the church planting table in the United States and in Canada. Third, and closely related to these other two challenges is the fact that biblical church planting is evangelism that results in new churches. What I mean by this statement is that church planting, as described in the Scriptures, is about conversion growth and not transfer growth. With approximately 75% of the United States and Canada not having a relationship with Jesus (and another four billion people across the globe), we must stop praising and rewarding transfer growth church planting strategies/methods and begin to focus on highly reproducible, multiplication strategies that lead to the making of disciples from out of the harvest fields. I write extensively about these concerns in the book.

What are a few other books on church planting that you believe are important to understand?

There are several excellent books out there today. I'm sure I'm going to forget some of them here. . . . Your book is a very good book-- and I promise I did not write this because this is your blog. I use and recommend Planting Missional Churches to many people. My guess is that most of those reading this blog are familiar with your work. Tom Steffen's book Passing the Baton: Church Planting that Empowers is an excellent resource. Of course, if there ever was a "classic" in church planting literature, David Hesselgrave's book Planting Churches Cross-Culturally would be at the top of the list. Aubrey Malphurs' book Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century and Bob Logan's Church Planter's Toolkit have influenced countless numbers of church planters over the years. While not a book, Bob Logan and Neil Cole wrote the outstanding resource Beyond Church Planting a few years ago. The most influential book on my thinking has been Charles Brock's book Indigenous Church Planting: A Practical Journey. Of course, I'm a little biased, but I also think my other book The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members is also important to read.

J.D. will be hanging around the blog today interacting in the comments, so be sure to hit him up with all your church planting questions.

Remember that Bon Jovi song from the late 80s, "Living in Sin?"

Well, I'm guessing half of you do.

It's about "love" justifying living together as a married couple, without a marriage covenant.

The song shouts, "I call it love, they call it living in sin!"

Remember? Rock ballad, black and white video?

Anyway, people are still talking about it and more people are living together today than they were back in the 1980s. At LifeWay Research, we wanted to know more.

In June of 2008 (and September 2007), we conducted related surveys (thankfully, not about Bon Jovi) for a recent book on parenting, The Parent Adventure: Preparing Your Children For a Lifetime With God, by Selma & Rodney Wilson and Scott McConnell.

In our study, we found that 6% of all parents with children under 18 years of age in their home are living with a partner to whom they are not married.

To give this some context, we first determined that 69% of all parents are married and 31% are single. We asked these single parents the following questions:

As I recently mentioned, I am intrigued by the Independent Baptist Movement. It is often caricatured and frequently misunderstood, but definitely worth understanding. With that in mind, when I see research on this movement, it catches my attention.

Paul Chappell and Clay Reed have written a book based upon an independent, nationwide survey of independent Baptist churches, and the result is Church Still Works, an insightful read that will prove surprising to some and encouraging to all.

Paul is the senior pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church and president of West Coast Baptist College in Lancaster, California. Clayton is the founder and director of Global Church Planters, which has worked with American missionaries and national pastors to help start more than three hundred churches around the world.

I was happy to talk to Clayton about the new book, and think you'll find the interview and the book helpful.

I have never been that guy who geeks out over Bible study software. I've always been old school. You know, I'd go with the hardcopy, printed editions of study helps and commentaries. These large, multi-volume works have taken up shelf space in my study/office for at least 20 years. And come on, who doesn't like shelves lined with books? It's a great aesthetic for a study.

Needless to say, heading out to study for my sermon at a coffee shop or a park was next to impossible. Well, unless I stuffed my bag so full of books that the zipper began to pray.

The Logos Scholar's Library: Gold has changed the way I study, where I study and the results of my studying. I am consistently impressed with it and thought I would share my review here at the blog.

While speaking at the Together for Adoption Conference, I visited a bit with my friend with Tony Merida. The Meridas have recently adopted four children from the Ukraine and have a passion for orphan care. I always appreciate his passion for the gospel and the mission of God.

Seeing him, reminded me that Tony's new book is out and I wanted to share a bit about it through the foreword I wrote for the book. It is a short foreword, but for some reason I manage to quote a Journey song, the Fireproof movie, and Lord of the Rings.

Not sure what got into me that day... but the book is worth your time, even if my foreword might not be!

Jim Belcher is the founding and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California. He is co-producer of the docudrama "From Earth to Heaven: The Life and Art of Vincent Van Gogh." He is also the cofounder of the Restoring Community Conference: Integrating Social Interaction, Sacred Space and Beauty in the 21st Century, an annual conference for city officials, planners, builders and architects.

Jim's new book, Deep Church is getting a lot of attention as he works to make sense of the conflict between the emerging and traditional ends of the church while offering a "third way." Read the interview and then jump into the comments below. Jim will be with us today and will interact with your questions.

I have shared a bit of my journey to healthier living and weight loss here on the blog, so the story of Todd Starnes' transformation and his new book naturally grabs my attention. And I imagine many of my readers would benefit to hear from his as well. Todd Starnes is a best-selling author and network news reporter for Fox News Radio, based in New York City. He is also an evangelical Christian and a member of the Journey Church in Manhattan. Todd is an award-winning journalist, earning one of his profession's highest honors, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Associated Press Mark Twain Award for Storytelling. His work is heard on more than 750 radio stations around the nation. He also hosts a religion podcast called, "FOX on Faith."

Steve Addison is the Director of Church Resource Ministries (CRM) Australia, and the author of a new book, Movements That Change The World. Steve is called to encourage church planting movements around the world and is therefore a student of the history of movements that spread the gospel. His new book is a look at that history.

I asked Steve a few questions for the blog. It's short and packed with content - sort of like the Gospel of Mark, just without the divine inspiration. :) Steve is in Australia, so with the time difference he wont be able to check out your comments and questions until around 6pm. But he will make it to the blog to interact. So hit him up now and he'll respond later this evening.

Why did you write Movements that Change the World?

A number of reasons. As a church planter I remember hearing Peter Wagner say, "Starting new churches is the most effective form of evangelism under the sun." I thought if that's true, then starting church planting movements could be even more effective.

I dived in to some church history and discovered that God was continually raising up movements for the renewal and expansion of the Christian faith. I learned that those movements are always on the fringes.

I began looking at Jesus as the founder of a missionary/missional movement that now spans the globe. I read Acts and Paul that way, and the lights came on.

You've identified the characteristics of dynamic movements. Tell us about them.

The five characteristics are: white-hot faith, commitment to a cause, contagious relationships, rapid mobilization and adaptive methods.

White-hot faith is the engine room of a dynamic movement. The apostle Paul was not converted by clever arguments but through a powerful encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road. We would not have had the Reformation without Martin Luther's struggle with the question of, "How can a holy God forgive a sinner like me?"

The secret of Jesus' life and ministry was his relationship of loving obedience to the Father and dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit. He drew his disciples into the same relationship and sent them out with no other resources.

A white-hot faith provides the motivation, energy and legitimacy to go change the world.

Next is commitment to a cause. For good or for evil, history is made by people committed to a common purpose. Nothing changes unless people care deeply and are willing take action. Jesus had high expectations of his followers. So high, that some of them walked away.

John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement. On one occasion he visited Bristol. When he arrived there were 900 people in the local Society. When he left 143 of them had been removed for various reasons: among them wife-beating, smuggling, and drunkenness. Wesley led a disciplined movement that changed the world.

The third characteristic of movements is contagious relationships. We are all just six handshakes away from everyone on the planet. Ideas, like viruses, spread from person to person and from group to group. In the age of the internet, contagious relationships are still the most important form of communication.

The most responsive people to the gospel are those who have recently seen someone in their world come to faith.

Whenever we see the Christian faith expanding exponentially, it's traveling across networks of preexisting relationships. We tend to focus on building quality relationships with a few. Jesus focused on connecting broadly and then through one responsive person, reaching households and villages. That's how we see the gospel spreading in Acts.

The fourth characteristic is rapid mobilization. Movements don't abolish the clergy, they just ordain everyone for ministry. What did Jesus do? He went after ordinary people and trained them on-the-job. His lecture on the nature of faith was conducted on a sinking boat in the midst of a storm. There was theological content integrated with life and ministry. Jesus grew leaders and released them to go and change the world.

You don't get dramatic expansion of a movement if everyone is a paid professional. If anyone is paid, they are paid to pioneer new fields and mobilize others. Whether they are in New York or New Delhi, that's what missionaries do.

The last characteristic is adaptive methods. The best illustration of an adaptive method I can think of is the game of soccer. Soccer is the world's game played by hundreds of millions and watched by billions. Why? I think it's because you can drop a ball at the feet of a three year old and she can start playing. It may take a lifetime of practice to master the game, but only an instant to begin enjoying it. Try doing that with American or Australian football.

Adaptive methods are simple, flexible and transferable. That's one reason why Jesus taught by telling stories. A good story, like the prodigal son, can be told by anyone to anyone, even across the boundaries of culture and time.

Movements are unchanging when it comes to their core message and beliefs. At the same time they are willing to change everything else to get that message out and get the job done. Unfortunately we have churches that are unwilling to change their methods, but quite happy to change the heart of the gospel. They have the worst of both worlds and the fruit is clear to see.

Where are the current examples of dynamic movements today?

The exciting news is they are mostly in the developing world--Africa, Asia, Latin America. These are also the regions of greatest population growth. Today, over 90% of new Christians will come from these regions. Expect that trend to continue.

In the US I've been encouraged by leaders such as Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, Ralph Moore, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and Jimmy Seibert who emphasize multiplication of disciples, workers and churches rather than just growth. A growing band of leaders are seeing the church as a movement.

The whole missional/emerging discussion has helped unfreeze us all in our understanding of church. If that is combined with a commitment to the Gospel and a passion to multiply disciples it could be quite fruitful.

What are some contemporary examples of adaptive methods?

I think the Alpha program is a good example. The strategies that David Garrison and others have developed to fuel church planting movements around the world is another clear example.

Who do you want to reach with the message of this book?

As I wrote I thought of a number of actual people. A couple leading a home group who have led eighteen people to Christ in the last year, and are wondering if this is the beginning of a new church. I thought of the leader of a large church in Kenya that is growing leaders who plant churches in the suburbs and the slums. I thought of a young woman in China who has come to faith, and is now reaching her friends with the gospel. I thought of a church leader in New York with a vision to reach the cities of the world.

What difference do you hope the book will make?

I want people to discover Jesus as the leader of a movement that changes the world.

Ralph Moore newest book, How to Multiply Your Church, comes out tomorrow. But, amazingly, as if it were in a time warp, it is on Amazon today. So, go buy it.

Ralph and I became friends during my consulting relationship with the Foursquare Church. As I have had the privilege to train Fourquare pastors and leadership, we had several opportunities to sit and talk about the remarkable church planting work they have facilitated in Hawaii and globally.

I had read (and used in as a textbook), his earlier book, Starting a New Church, so I was happy to write the foreword to the new book and have reproduced it here. (I am hoping that this will put me in good favor for that preaching invitation in Hawaii-- a place that I have, sadly, never been!)

Multiplication changes things.

In the cultural phenomenon called Star Trek, David Gerrold wrote one of the classic episodes: "The Trouble with Tribbles." On that voyage of the starship Enterprise, the crew encountered some lovable little fuzzballs called Tribbles. At first, the crew fell in love with these cute little creatures. That is, until overwhelmed the vessel through rapid multiplication. Tribbles multiplied faster than rabbits. Multiplication changes things.

Ralph Moore points out clearly and poignantly that the North American church needs some church planting "trouble with tribbles." We need to "fall in love" with multiplication and abandon our addiction to addition. He brings us out of the darkness of church-as-usual, addition thinking, into the light of a new reproductive paradigm. Churches in North America desperately need Moore's message and practical experience.. Hopefully, this work will help spark the kind of movement we so desperately need.

Ralph's book is rich in historical insight, filled with biblical acumen, and applicable to the current realities of church planting. His discussion of fourth generation disciple making, saturation church planting, benefits of multiplying, and New Testament models are
invaluable. His book is practical, challenging, and insightful. Leaders who hunger for reaching another level of ministry impact will want to read and apply the principles found in How to Multiply Your Church.

He observes that because we count individual converts we have a hard advancing from an addition mentality. Think about it this way. When children learn their ABC's and how to count, it's exciting for parents. Then children learn how to combine letters to make words and learn how to add and subtract numbers--that can be a frustrating time for children and parents. Both can wonder if all the sounding out words and counting is really going to lead anywhere. Maybe that's why so many churches and pastors never move on to multiplication--it's difficult. Multiplication is even more difficult to do once it is
embraced. And it's hard to figure out how to do it. Simple addition is easier.

But, most people don't stop with learning their ABC's and learning to add and subtract. Somewhere in the middle of sounding out words and counting, something happens. Words explode into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, books, and writing. Numbers explode into the world of multiplication and division. When that happens, a new world begins to take shape for children and parents.

For too long, the Church in North America has been stuck in the comfortable ABC and simple counting phase of church. We do not have to stay there. Don't get me wrong; I am not against practicing the ABC and counting things (basic spiritual disciplines and measuring who we reach). But, God wants us to build on that foundation and let Him take
things to a new world--a world where disciples and churches are multiplying. That new world, as Ralph Moore points out, will require changing the way we think about and do church. An attitude of increase will be required.

So, what will this new world of multiplication look like? What will it take to change worlds from addition to multiplication, then from multiplication to rapid multiplication or movement? First, we must get ourselves, our egos, and our puny ideas out of the way. Second, we must ask God to increase in our lives and our churches. We need to ask
God for . . .

1. Bigger Faith--When is the last time you asked God to do something in your life or the life of your church that makes His name and fame great. That's what the disciples asked of Jesus, "Increase our faith!" (Luke 17:5). For some, just thinking about reproduction and
multiplication is like asking them to think about giving extreme skiing or bungee jumping a try. Much less actually doing anything about it. We need to ask for bigger faith. The new question is, "What does God want?"

2. Greater Focus on Jesus--John the Baptizer said, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). Think about it, John had a pretty good thing going. I mean, aside from a weird diet and slightly unfashionable dress. He had all these people coming to him, he had his own followers, and he got to put the smack down on the religious leaders. What a gig! But, once Jesus arrived on the scene, John pointed people solely in Jesus' direction. John even encouraged those following him to follow Jesus. John and John's kingdom was no longer the issue.. Jesus and Jesus' Kingdom was the issue. The new question is, "Who is this all about?"

3. Fresh Boldness in Sharing His Word-- throughout the book of Acts it happened. In fact, at one point, Luke reported, "But the word of God continued to increase and spread" (Acts 12:24). When Paul was in prison, he asked the church at Ephesus to pray that he would share the God's message with boldness. The word of God is increasing and spreading in other parts of the world right now. The new question is, "Why not in North America, again?"

4. Overflowing and Expanding Love--Multiplying disciples and churches requires a special kind of love for Jesus, His Church, and the lost peoples around the world. Paul prayed that the church at Thessalonica would direct God's love to those in their world. I like the way The Message words it, "And may the Master pour on the love so it fills your lives and splashes over on everyone around you, just as it does from us to you. May you be infused with strength and purity, filled with confidence in the presence of God our Father when our Master Jesus arrives with all his followers" (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13). The new question is, "How are you praying?"

In its recent history, the CGM (Church Growth Movement) in North America has been more about a GMCM (Grow My Church Movement). What Ralph describes so well is that we need a DMCM (Disciples Multiplying Churches Movement). If God would graciously give us a fresh outpouring of those four things described above, we might see that kind of
multiplicative movement. Ralph Moore has challenged us to think about it and seek it. He has called those who are willing to "step out in faith" and do it.

If you believe that God is nudging you to respond to that call, this is my prayer for you, "May the LORD make you increase, both you and your children" (Psalm 115:14).

May WE change so multiplication can change even more things for God's glory in the world.

Get the book-- it is worth the read.

I am always calling the church to think of herself and live out her calling as God's missionary people. And while there is much being written on all things "missional" these days, a lot of it is theoretical and theological. We need that, but we also need practical resources, advice and tools to share with others that will encourage missional living.

One is Alan Hirsch's The Forgotten Ways handbook. Another is The Tangible Kingdom Primer. Compelled By Love and Sent: Living the Missional Nature of the Church are also practical starting points.

People are also sharing their ideas and experiences online. Jared Wilson, pastor and co-founder of Element in Nashville and author of Your Jesus is Too Safe, offers Five Missional Practices You Can Do Now. Steve McCoy, pastor of Doxa Fellowship in Woodstock, IL and uberblogger at Reformissionary offered two posts giving good practical advice for living as the sent people of God this summer. Be sure to check out Summerbia and Summerbia: Connection Tools.