DOES YOUR CHURCH NEED A SMOKING SECTION?

Recently I was in Chemnitz, Germany (formerly Karlmarxstadt, East Germany) with United Methodist missionaries who are planting a Fresh Expressions faith community.  The community is called Inspire - same name as a creative new faith community project in my hometown of Washington DC.  The leaders of Inspire are Barry and Jill Sloan, an Irish couple who have been serving in Germany for 17 years.  Barry read my first book (Fling Open the Doors) several years ago.  The book (about church as community center) helped to spark in him the idea to plant a community center in a city where 97 percent of the young adults are atheist or seriously agnostic.  Inspire is that center.  Inspire is located on the Bruhle, a pedestrian mall built by the communists years ago, and which fell into disrepair in recent decades.  But as the economy strengthens, slowly they are renovating abandoned buildings on the Bruhle.   The United Methodists are well positioned at ground zero of this community redevelopment.

NOTES FROM A WEEK INTERVIEWING PROSPECTIVE CHURCH PLANTERS

In both the Pittsburgh area and nearer to Baltimore, I interviewed a dozen prospective church planters last week, nominated for consideration and conversation by their overseers. It was really a delightful week meeting some talented people.

FROM JIMMY STEWART TO BRAD PITT

One of the most helpful books to fall into my hands in the last few years is a new little booklet from The Barna Organization entitled Making Space for Millennials.  Every single person reading this needs that book. And most of the people you supervise need that book.  Based on 30,000 interviews with American young adults, the Barna team has some important information for us.  (Dave Kinnemon, author of You Lost Me, is the new head of Barna, buying the company from founder George Barna.)

PLAYING CHURCH

As I write this, I am staying as a guest in the home of Jeff Petrillo and Beth Estock in Portland, Oregon.  Beth is a coach with Epicenter Group and a collaborator with me, reflecting on the challenges of Christian ministry in the twenty-first century.  Beth and I are working together this week, talking through the major ideas and movement of a book, to be released in 2016.  The book concerns the future of the church - what will it look like by mid-century.  Many prophets of doom remind us (correctly) that the sky is falling.  Beth and I agree with that assessment, but we also have a strong sense of what is emerging!   Indeed we believe that the church has a very bright and wonderful future - albeit a future that may seem weird by twentieth century sensibilities.

HOW TO GET THE MAXIMUM BANG OUT OF A LEADER RETREAT

It's January and the season for leader retreats. New board members, new lead team members, and established teams needing to vision for another year! We have all suffered through some lame and tedious retreats. And most of us have been involved in some really productive ones.

CATCHING ON TO ADVENT

Advent has long been a somewhat puzzling season to me. We start out focusing on Second Coming (of all things), and then switch to Mary and Joseph narratives, and finally bring out the Wiseman the week after the Christmas tree comes down. Most mainline Christians are not oriented to keep an eye open for a literal Second Coming of Christ.   But we are oriented to a shopping season that introduces Nativity images and Christmas Carols around Thanksgiving... and so it all just gets kind of fuzzy-weird.

THE POWER OF TWELVE

In a couple of my coaching calls this month, I have been told (by very talented leaders) that they were struggling to get a committed core of people for their new church project. In both cases, their work focused on 20-something adults, who admired the new church, friended the pastor and liked the church on Facebook, and were even willing to pitch an hour of volunteering occasionally. However, in both cases, almost no company of highly committed persons came together at the core. Yet.