kingdom « measure by measure… with mike and leslie

Antioch 2009: Going Back To Where It All Began

So Leslie and I were gone for 15 days without the kids to attend a global mission summit in the old city of Antioch, where the first lay-established, missionary-sending church was born [and to vacation a bit before and after in Istanbul and London].

Here is a photo of St. Peter’s Grotto: the alleged place where [...]

Reflecting on the Listening Gathering 2008 in Switzerland – Lessons learned about Spiritual Authority and God as a Speaking God

In late October of 2008, Leslie and I participated in a “Listening Gathering” with fellow Organic/Simple Church Movement people. It was a significant time for me where certain things were set in motion for me and certain realities revealed to me.

I have since internalized them and not been as “conscious” of them. Not long ago, [...]

Heading now towards a vocational shift – Some key points in the early journey

So after 8 years in church planting and pastoring the church we planted, we announced last Sunday that we are moving on in roughly half a year’s time to the next part of the journey God has for us.

Here is the text of what I shared with our baylight family. It’s been an anxious and unsettling [...]

Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian movement and Herrnhut

One of the most important yet little known people in the history of modern movements is Count Nikolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, founding leader of the Moravians and their German community called Herrnhut.

Leslie and I just finished a nice little book called, The Lord of the Ring, by Phil Anderson that details the life and legacy of [...]

Spirituality without additives (a.k.a. “Organic Spirituality)

As I prepare for church planting training, a theme keeps coming up. It’s paralleled my and my simple church planter friends’ journey so far. It’s this: before we can talk about church planting movements and organic churches, we need to go further back; then, back some more. My friend, Lyle, had a fantastic analogy to [...]

Calling out the malaise of western cultural Christianity and the heresy of blessing

One of the blogs I follow is that of Guy Muse, an American Southern Baptist simple church planter in Ecuador who is more of a cultural outsider as a missionary kid born in South America and longtime missionary to Ecuador. This causes him to be quite a provocateur for the North American branch of the SBC [...]

The Rabbit and the Elephant – Is small the new big? I wish it were but it isn’t yet.

I picked up a new book written by our friends, Tony and Felicity Dale, called The Rabbit and the Elephant. And I wanted to put a plug in for it, and take a moment to discuss the analogy. The book begins with them telling a story to a crowded Indian church planter training time (one that [...]

A difficult question with a new metric

So with the help of two very committed people (thanks L. and J.!), we’ve finished helping Wolfgang Simson with editing the final 1/4 or so of his e-book, The Starfish Manifesto. Click here for the pre-edited version, and type “ok” when prompted for the password.

In it, I stumbled across a great series of questions: Would the [...]

Preaching, teaching and conferences are overrated

I realize that is heresy to evangelical Christian culture. Post-reformation evangelicalism has always emphasized the pulpit in its architecture and the sermon in the Sunday event. Even to this day, the sermon takes the lion’s share of the Sunday event. Also, people today are subscribing to podcasts and listening to sermons online (as the [...]

Susan Boyle, Viral Video, and natural design… a.k.a. “The Church’s Got Talent”

By now, most of the online world has seen Susan Boyle’s inspirational audition on Britain’s Got Talent. What also amazes me about this global phenomenon is how flat it showed our world to be. Reality T.V. shows in some form have been around on television for some time — going back at the very least to the [...]

measure by measure… with mike and leslie

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