The Woman at the Recycling Center

March 18, 2013 — 3 Comments
Erin & Kay getting started on litter pick-up

Erin & Kay ready to begin picking up litter

Did we meet the woman at the well? In the course of picking up litter, Kay & I got to pray for a woman who told us, “The man I’m with, he’s not my husband.”

The project

“I’m a Christian, too. But I’m… backslidden.”

Our church is preparing to move into its own facility. As part of the preparations, a “scout team” was formed to pray through our new neighborhood, learning its needs, and finding ways to minister. We don’t want to be a church that isn’t actually part of the neighborhood. We want to be good neighbors, blessing the community in Jesus’ name.  Continue Reading…

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Disciple-Making Training in San Jose (and elsewhere)

February 15, 2013 — 2 Comments
Three-legged race

Running together, not solo

I’ve written about Cityteam before, and how they reshaped their entire organization around Church Planting Movements, where the good news of Jesus Christ spreads virally. We hear of such movements around the world, but they’re the only group I know of that has seen true viral growth here in North America. So when they take what they’ve learned in the past few years and turn it into training, I pay attention!

They changed the term from CPM to Disciple Making Movements. And they’re calling this training idisciple Seminars. These include Awareness Seminars (a brief introduction) and Basic Training (hands-on). Is your city on the list?

  • Lake Oswego, OR
  • Portland
  • Lawrenceville, GA
  • San Jose
  • Philadelphia
  • Minneapolis

I’m clearing my calendar for the San Jose training! What about you? Check out their training events page. Continue Reading…

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“Safe Halloween” Events vs. Neighborhoods

November 1, 2012 — 12 Comments

Why promote "safe Halloween" it's not dangerous?

For Halloween this year, I decided to dress up to make distributing candy more fun. But we only had a trickle of trick-or-treaters. With time to kill, I went to hang out with a spontaneous clump of neighbors.

The older couple next door who has lived here the longest said, “Oh, back in the day, we used to have lots of kids come through.”

“What happened to change that?” I asked.

“Well, churches and schools started hosting Halloween events, you know.”

And it hit me. In an effort to create “safe Halloween” events, these groups are sucking the life out of neighborhoods. Continue Reading…

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New Churches & Evangelism: All Backwards?

October 24, 2012 — 12 Comments

Planting new churches & evangelism: the cart before the horse

[This is the conclusion of Starting New Churches: Is Our Focus Misplaced?]

“Planting new churches is the most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.” You can’t read any church planting material without bumping into that quote. Repeatedly. Hey, C. Peter Wagner said it, so that settles it.

Or does it? Continue Reading…

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Things I Did 2: Turning 50

September 24, 2012 — Leave a comment

Besides traveling to the Big Nerd Ranch (and catching the Dr. King Memorial in the process), what else did I do during my blogging silence?

Well, I did manage to turn 50.

birthday-50

I’m 5!

If you look closely, you’ll see the cake has a hill. Yes, as in “over the.” Continue Reading…

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The Soliton Sessions Are Back! (With a new name)

August 30, 2012 — Leave a comment
Sideways Sessions, formerly the Soliton Sessions

The Gathering Formerly Known As the Soliton Sessions

Nine years ago, I drove myself to Ventura, California for the first of the Soliton Sessions. I went at the invitation of an online friend I’d never met. I didn’t know what to expect.

It saved my faith.

The Sessions became an annual pilgrimage for me. I’d never experienced a “conference” that was really centered more on community, conversation, and opening to divine imagination. As I wrote for the Next-Wave e-zine, “It wasn’t so much a conference as a reunion of a family I never knew I had.”

The Soliton Sessions are dead. Long live the Sideways Sessions!

After a hiatus of a several years, I’m excited to learn that the Sessions are back! The name has changed to the Sideways Sessions, and the location has changed to Portland, Oregon. And I’m bummed that I can’t make it. …But maybe you can!

As with previous gatherings, the Sideways Sessions limit the number of people involved in order to promote conversation. I know it’s only two weeks away, but… pray about it. Does God want you there?

The Sideways Sessions
September 13 – 15, 2012
Portland, OR

For more info, go to the registration site. And let me know if you go. I’d love to hear about it.

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Things I Did 1: Big Nerd Ranch & Dr. King Memorial

June 15, 2012 — Leave a comment

My blogging went quiet between February 25 (What to Do for Lent in Silicon Valley) and May 25 (New Churches Stuck in a Christendom Box). “Jon, what did you do during those three months?” I’m glad you asked! :D Let’s start with my trip to Atlanta. It gave me an unexpected connection to the time my father was thought to be dead, killed while marching with Dr. King.

Big Nerd Ranch

In March, I flew out to Atlanta. There, I spent a week at Big Nerd Ranch for their Advanced iOS Programming class:

Big Nerd Ranch

A really great group of people

I’m a Big Nerd now! I even have a T-shirt that says, “Achieve Nerdvana.”

Dr. King Memorial

When the Advanced iOS class finished, my coworkers and I had a little time to before the return flight. We settled on going to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. To my surprise, the first person to greet us at the memorial was Mahatma Gandhi: Continue Reading…

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Bill Maher on Christians and Osama bin Laden

June 9, 2012 — 34 Comments

Last month, America celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Bill Maher, that mocker of religion who created the mockumentary Religulous, had a few choice words for evangelical Christians:

New rule: If you’re a Christian who supports killing your enemies, and torture, you have to come up with a new name for yourself.

…But you see, I can say that, because I’m a non-Christian — just like most Christians.

If you’re easily offended: take a pass.
The rest of you: discuss.

Related: Osama bin Laden’s Death, and Dr. Who

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Kay sez 22: Women’s Wiles

May 28, 2012 — 2 Comments

Kay: You’re probably right, dear.

Jon: [slight pause as I process what she said] …Hey, waitaminit. I haven’t been married 26 years for nothing. I recognize that! That’s one of those… women’s trick phrases, isn’t it?

Kay: Yes, you could be right.

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New Churches Stuck in a Christendom Box

May 25, 2012 — 2 Comments

New churches are stuck in a box we made

This is a continuation of Starting New Churches: Is Our Focus Misplaced? Two friends discussing church planting led me to wonder: Is church planting really “the most effective form of evangelism” in America? If so, I think we could do much better.

New churches: One size doesn’t fit all

The American landscape is continuing to shift away from any “Christianized” identity. Welcome to post-Christian America. The rules have changed, and America is a completely different mission field. Alan Hirsch teaches, “All mission in the West is cross-cultural.”

Revealing Jesus in a new context requires new approaches. So why do new churches keep going back to the “tried and true”? You know the old definition of insanity. By that definition, we American Christians are nuts about establishing new churches — specifically, church services. Continue Reading…

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