Happy New Year and Let’s Start Off Right!

Remember the Friday is for Freebies! giveaway each week in 2009.   Good free church stuff all for the taking.  Click here for this week’s freebie and rules. Outreach2Go.com is now live and has some good stuff on it.  I’ll be blogging there about the “mobile effect” — how mobile technology is changing the way [...]

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Friday is for freebies!

Here’s the first of our “Friday is for freebies!” giveaways!  I’m posting thie early because of New Year’s.   This week’s freebie is the DVD and participant’s guide of the Where Faith and Culture Meet series that I reviewed in 2007.  The DVD features six individuals and families involved in cross-cultural missional outreach.   I used [...]

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10 Great New Features For 2009

The elves have been working overtime to bring you great new features just in time for the New Year!  Are you ready?  Here they are: 1.  Interviews with leading church influencers.   I’ll be talking with some of the best people in the churchworld today on a variety of topics that impact small churches.  And, [...]

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Track church stats free at ChurchMetrics.com

The more I learn about LifeChurch.tv, the more I like those folks.  I told you about the mobile edition for YouVersion.com — an online Bible, journal, commentary, and community.   But wait, there’s more! LifeChurch.tv also offers churchmetrics.com.  This is a free cloud site for tracking church stats.  The LC-dot-tv folks take a simple approach [...]

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Sermon: The Privilege of Seeing The Future

The Privilege of Seeing the Future December 28, 2008 – First Sunday of Christmastide  Luke 2:22-40 22When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23(as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn [...]

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The Birth of Jesus

The Birth of Jesus – Luke 2:1-20 NIV  1In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)3And everyone went to his own town to register. 4So Joseph also went up from the town [...]

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Free ebook and thanks for 150,000!

Well, we did it!  Two years ago Outreach magazine gave me the opportunity to blog under their banner.  It took a while to pick up momentum, but, we’ve hit the big time now.  As of today, we have crossed 150,000 page views in only two years!  Thank you for sticking around through the past two [...]

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The Dangers of Recorded Music at a Funeral

The Wizard of Oz is on tonight for the gazillionth time, and it reminded me of a funny story I heard a couple of years ago.  We were in Nashville for a sad occasion — the funeral of a family member.   Debbie was responsible for the arrangements, and we got to know the funeral [...]

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Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Advent: David and the Subprime Housing Crisis

Here’s the sermon I’m preaching tomorrow from 2 Samuel 7:1-16.  Not the usual Christmas text, but I think you’ll see the connection.  I hope your final Advent Sunday in a blessed one.   David and the Subprime Housing Crisis 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 1 After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had [...]

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The Economic Realities of Church Planting

I can’t get Julie Clawson’s words out of my head –  We couldn’t attract enough people willing to give enough money to pay our salary and so the church failed.  Julie was responding to Dan Kimball’s critique of missional churches as opposed to attractional churches.  Julie was stating a “crass” (her word) reality of church [...]

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