WHAT I AM LEARNING ABOUT "PARACHUTE-DROP" CHURCH PLANTS

When I worked as a new church developer for a United Methodist region a few years back, the one thing I said I would never do would be to try to plant a new church as a parachute drop: as a stranger and alien in a community. In the late 1990s and early 2000s I had helped establish two new faith communities in a place where I had lived and networked for several years. Dozens pitched in to help with both projects, and I lost sleep over neither.   Today (a decade later) these two faith communities together gather 1200 in worship on most Sundays.

MY CALL TO ACTION

I was sixteen years old, traveling with my church youth group in the New Mexico mountains: listening to an American missionary talk about his work in Korea. Blah, blah, blah the speaker went on. Calling us to action. It meant nothing to me. But it just so happened, as I zoned out from whatever he was talking about, that the Spirit of God started chattering in my soul. I experienced that night what my faith community confirmed to be a "call to ministry." I had no idea what I was getting into, but the sense of God's calling that began that night, has guided and motivated me now for more than 33 years.

WHEN COMMUNITIES GET LOST

Recently, a group of us in Virginia gathered with one of our clergy peers, Jan Holton from Yale Divinity School, to think about the nature of community.

During the time of the "Lost Boys of Sudan", orphans of war wandered for hundreds of miles as refugees in east central Africa.   Along their meandering journey, they would sometimes run into wild animals, specifically lions. They learned that their only hope of defense against a lion was to put the small children in the center of a human circle, and for the older children to surround them facing outward, in order to create the perception of something that was bigger than the lion.

Memo to Protestant Liberals (and Moderates): the Rapture did come and This is What's Left!

The other day as I left after two maddening hours at the Apple Store, running very late to fight the DC rush hour to pick up a friend for a baseball game, I got onto I-395 only to discover no traffic.   Whole lanes empty. I called my friend to joke, "The rapture came and it's wonderful - you can finally drive in this town!" Turns out it was just the Friday before a long weekend, and the legions had left town early.

THE BEST ACTION ON THE MINISTRY FEILD IS AT SHORT STOP!!

This past summer, at the height of baseball season, Bener Agtarap and I created a metaphor for church multiplication using a baseball diamond. Bener had sent me to Manila earlier in the year to study the habits and patterns of ministry by which United Methodist churches had multiplied so rapidly.   In the Philippines, new congregations begin as mission stations (first base), then the become faith communities with Bible study (second base), then they become worshiping communities (third base), then fully established churches who are fully invested in the mission of the denomination (home base). 

CHURCH AS AN ACQUIRED TASTE

I have just about given up trying to fly out of Washington DC due to thunderstorm delays and cancelations.  My flight was cancelled and United Airlines was unable to get me to Chicago in time to speak to the Northern Illinois Annual Conference.  So I emailed my notes to the Rev. Trey Hall, who spoke for me.  Here are a few excerpts from this speech I never gave, but sort of did...

NIXON IN CHINA: THINKING ABOUT WHY THE WEST NEEDS TO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE RISE OF THE CHURCH IN THE EAST

The jet lag has subsided finally, and I am fully back in the world of North America after an April in Asia that will haunt me for a good season.  So much of our American perception of the world beyond our borders is rooted in a mixture of out-dated reality, media-reinforced cliche and cartoon over-simplification.  The world has changed and is changing faster than some of our notions and ideas.  Nowhere more than China!