evangelism
Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird's new book, Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers, packs a punch like no other church planting book I've read. Stetzer and Bird, both experienced church planters turned missional researchers, deliver compelling examples of real churches engaged in church multiplication
Christian history
Ecclesia Church in Houston, Texas, whose website describes the church as a "holistic missional Christian community," invited local artists to submit original artwork depicting each of the Stations of the Cross. Young 10-year old artist Jackson Potts II, who has been studying photography with his photographer father for
Community
This article first appeared in Outreach magazine in July/August 2009, in my Small Church, Big Idea column. A New Reputation For An Old Church by Chuck Warnock When the doorbell rang at Cradock Baptist Church not long ago, the staff buzzed in a man who announced, "I'
ethics
Who Sinned? The Problem of Human Suffering J ohn 9:1-51As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3"Neither this man nor his parents sinned,"
Missional Church
Seth Godin said it first, "Small is the new big." Now it appears, big churches are the new small churches. Let me explain. The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, Texas is sponsoring Verge, a missional community conference. Felicity Dale of simplychurch.com and a leader in the
church as abbey
The church growth movement helped foster the idea of the pastor as the authoritative leader of the congregation. I know because I studied church growth at its height at Fuller Seminary. The premise of the theory of "pastoral authority" was that churches grew faster and larger when the
Creativity
E-books are popping up everywhere suddenly. As I write this, mediabistro.com's e-book summit is livestreaming on my office PC. The hot nearly-new gift for Christmas this year is an e-reader -- a Kindle, a Nook, a Sony Reader, or one of the others coming soon. The entire
Congregation
There is an idea floating around out there that small churches are inherently resistant to change. This is often called a "small church mentality" because the conventional wisdom is that every church will be growing numerically if it has the right attitude. However, small churches should not be
Community
Churches can care for their communities by providing resources to encourage and strengthen marriage. The Brookings Institute's Ron Haskins writes -- "Higher marriage rates among the poor would benefit poor adults themselves, their children, and the nation." Haskins believes that churches and other non-profits should encourage
bless the world
More world citizens and more Americans go hungry each day than ever before in the history of the world. One billion people out of the 6-billion who inhabit the earth, do not have enough to eat. Almost 17% of the world's population -- 1-in-6 people in other words
Missional Church
Today Confessions of a Small-Church Pastor passed 300,000 page views! Readership has grown by 50,000 page views per year since I started this blog in December, 2006. Thanks for reading and commenting and sticking around for three years. You can help spread the word about this blog, which
Culture
The church of the future resides in an urban setting, consists of multiple minorities, and espouses progressive social values, according to two recently-released reports. While most church futurists have focused on church models (i.e., house churches vs. megachurches) in their predictions of the shape of church in the next