The Barbell Strategy and the Church in the New Covid World
In the financial world, there is a concept known as the barbell strategy. The strategy consists of putting 90% of your money in low-risk investments—something like mutual funds or maybe investing in silver. Then you take the other 10% of your money and invest in something very risky—something like cryptocurrency. What you don’t want to […]
When Evangelism Doesn’t Work
Silence is a finicky thing. In the forest, silence is a beautiful thing. After a sales pitch, silence is long and uncomfortable. After a gospel presentation, silence is heartbreaking. Silence combined with deadness of face, just for a second, was the worst experience I’ve felt in a long time. Two young women sat in my […]
How Do We Share the Gospel?
This is Question #5 in Matthew W. Bates’s The Gospel Precisely: Surprisingly Good News About Jesus Christ the King.
A Personal Culture That Leads to Discipling Relationships
*Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Corey Trimble’s An Authentic Experience: Creating an Inviting Culture with Biblical Integrity. Corey is convinced (and has shown as a pastor of an influential church) that it is possible to cultivate an inviting church culture without sacrificing biblical convictions. In the following excerpt, Corey describes how he […]
Friendship Evangelism in a Post-Christian Era
Our culture currently demeans church, seeing it as offering little value. They see the gospel as unscientific and something that once held value in the evolution of civilization. However, friendship with Christ-followers meets little resistance. Pursue a friendship long enough and authentic evidence of God begins to show up if you live the fruit of […]
Disciple Making Shift #5 – From Competing Goals to One End Goal
This article on shifting to a singular end goal is Part 5 in a 5-Part series on Jesus-style disciple making. Here’s the Intro, Shift #1, #2, #3, and #4. In our final article, we arrive at question 3: What is Our End Goal? Once again, here’s the passage we’ve been going through: “All authority in heaven and […]
Disciple Making Shift #2 – From Going to Church to Going to Lost People
In our last post, we discovered the first shift to Jesus-style disciple making: from seeing our identity as church members to seeing our identity as disciple makers. In this post, we’re going to discover Shift 2. And whereas the first shift asked, Who are we? Shift #2 explores the question, How do we live? Let’s reread […]
Lessons from the Church in Germany: Tsunami
Q: Remind me of how influential German thinkers have been. Germany has always been on the cutting edge of various kinds of progress. For example, in the early 1900s, Germany was the most technologically advanced country in the world. Their engineering was way ahead of America’s and Britain’s. When I think of influential theologians, Germany […]
