Category: Church Planting
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Cool church?
This is so encouraging to read – especially from a church with the size and influence of Life Church: The American Church is not lacking for “cool” pastors. Like a single guy who is trying just-a-bit-too-hard to impress a girl, some churches are simply trying too hard to be cool. I’m very encouraged to see…
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Why bivocational? (You can’t do it alone)
We’re at the end of a discussion about why bivocational ministry is a needed, and positive, idea for the church. To read the beginning, go here. 6. It forces you to build teams I mentioned it in the first post, but one of my biggest struggles with bivocational ministry has been this idea of focus.…
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Why bivocational? (You’re not special)
We’re in the middle of a discussion about why bivocational ministry is a needed, and positive, idea for the church. To read the beginning, go here. 5. You’re just like anyone else I know. We all want to be special. But here’s the deal. It’s always a challenge when a pastor gets up in front…
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Why bivocational? (It’s sustainable)
We’re in the middle of a discussion about why bivocational ministry is a needed, and positive, idea for the church. To read the beginning, go here. 4. It’s sustainable The truth is, church planting (and church “long-terming”) has to look different as our culture changes. As I mentioned earlier, it takes a lot of resources…
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Why bivocational? (A good kind of messy)
We’re in the middle of a discussion about why bivocational ministry is a needed, and positive, idea for the church. To read the beginning, go here. 3. It’s messy This isn’t a thrilling reason. But sometimes ways that are easier are only easier because they cover over problems – not because they avoid them. Working…
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Why bivocational? (Money goes to ministry)
We’re in the middle of a discussion about why bivocational ministry is a needed, and positive, idea for the church. To read the beginning, go here. 2. Money goes to ministry, not overhead. And decisions are made at the ground level. I understand it on a certain level, but it’s sad how much of the…
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Why bivocational? (Shared responsibility)
What will church look like in the future? Culture’s changing, the world is changing. How will it affect the church? I’m sure of a few things. One: We’ll always have something that looks like what we have now. Two: If the church is going to resist becoming a marginalized, non-influential part of society, other models…
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Leaders in action
I’m working to build our website for life groups at Oasis. We’re going to try some new things with it, which I’ll share about later. But for our leader profiles, I decided to go a little retro – taking a few photos and turning them into animated GIFS (like all websites in 1994 had). I…
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Church planting – Wrestling with multi-site models and consumerism
While this blog is silent (give me a week or two and things will pick up again), there’s a great conversation going on over at Ed Stetzer’s blog about multi-site churches and some of their challenges. Read Ed’s first post (Questions for McChurch) here. Read a response (Questions for “Questions for McChurch”) here.
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Simple wins.
In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz writes that too many choices can actually be a bad thing. Let’s say Ted to buy a new television. He walks into his local Buy More and is confronted not with two or three tvs, but with a wall of options. Now, he knew he wanted a new…
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Catch some behind-the-scenes interviews on church planting and more
For those of you who may not follow some of the big blogs that are involved in it, Rick Warren is hosting a summit for a select group of pastors, and a group of bloggers has been busy live-streaming interviews all day. I just watched an interview with Rick McKinley and Bob Roberts – two…
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Becoming missional communities
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be a “missional community” – how small groups can organize around outward mission that enables those relationships with God and each other to grow and be developed along the way. Alan Hirsch has a lot of great things to say about this here. The…
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Pieces of paper can’t tell the whole story
Today’s been an organization day in Sampson world. I’ve spent the morning sorting through piles of papers that have accumulated over the past few months as well as scanning some older files I want to keep around. One folder I ran across was filled with church plant proposals from different church planters I’ve met with.…
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Learning from other pastors…
David Fitch (author of The Great Giveaway) writes about the things he wished he’d done more of during the past few years as a missonal pastor. I found them enlightening and encouraging. The first three are below. Click through to his blog at the end to read the rest… Over the past several years of…
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Linkage: Alpha male pastors, commitments, and following Jesus
>> Death of the Alpha Male Pastor || Los talks about something I’ve been mulling over. The one master leader thing just isn’t sustainable in the long term. What do more sustainable models look like? (Someday we’ll talk about that some more here, but until then, I think everything Alan Hirsch talks about gets us…
Jon Sampson 