The Cart and The Horse

What is the relationship of evangelism to church planting?
In a recent post titled, “Dr. Wagner’s Cart Has Been Pulling the Horse for Too Long”, Neil Cole (author, Organic Church) writes about this relationship.

In my last post (Frameworks for Mission: Direction or Dogma) we looked at the experience of Cornelius as described by Luke in Acts chapter 10. I asked the question, Are we saved by cognitive acceptance of certain doctrines or by the direction of our lives?  

How are women and men “saved”? Are we saved by cognitive acceptance of certain dogmas? Are we saved by the direction of our lives? Or both or neither.

 I received a question from a friend in the Philippines. I’ve paraphrased his question below.

Alex,

Last week, I had a conversation with someone. While we were talking, he asked me if my insight was biblical.

I asked him, why does my insight have to be biblical? Isn’t that being fundamentalist?

Taking a Walk on the Human Side

Monday, March 10, 2008
Orlando, Fl
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“If you learn this you will know something about Jesus that many Christians do not know,” I told them.

This week:

The Turning to the Scriptures - Part 2

The four turnings are these:

A turning to Jesus Christ as Lord
A turning to some form of Christ following community
A turning to the Scriptures - Part 1
A turning back to the world on mission

We been talking about the 4 Turnings of the human heart that [...]

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There is a spectrum of approaches for creating community with and among unreached people. Let’s draw from the world of technology for an anology.

Technologies exist on an opacity/ transparency spectrum. [Hat Tip to polymath and wordmaven Dean Sharp for the find].
An OPAQUE technology is one in which the technology [...]

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In PART ONE of this Two Part post titled, The Mega Church and Home Church Networks: Twin Trajectories and Why We Need Them Both, I wrote the following:

The first [Mega Church] trajectory needs excellence and resources to launch and heart and hospitality to succeed. The second [House Church [...]

recent Gallup survey shows that just about three in four Americans hold some paranormal belief — in at least one of the following: extra sensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, ghosts, mental telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation, and channeling. There are no significant differences in belief by age, gender, education, or region of the country.

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Sam Radford, UK publisher of a collaborative effort called The Kingdom Blog , asks the following question about the Voxtropolis strategy. Enjoy.

Alex,

Just wondering what your thoughts/plans were regarding Voxtropolis Cafe’s.
Establishing a Cafe as a kingdom venture has long been in my thinking.

Sam,

I’m creating a franchise of cafes and galleries [Voxtropolis cafes [...]