We started the Thingy (the missional church Wendy and I belong to) with the desire of redefining “church.”  We hoped to move away from a program-centric understanding of church to a lifestyle-centric understanding.  We wanted membership in the church to be more about how we lived in our communities than what we did when we gathered. As the team planned I studied other groups with lifestyle driven models of discipleship – specifically recovery programs like [...]

Growing up I was highly involved in Boy Scouts.  Truth be told, I am an Eagle Scout.  The Scout’s motto is “be prepared” and while it works quite well for them, I think that it is something that we as church leaders should be adopting as well.  Earlier this week I wrote about the entitlement mentality that pastors sometimes get caught up in.  While that post is good for identifying the issue, it really doesn’t [...]

Matt Note: Doug White has been my college professor, confidante, mentor, and friend throughout the last twelve years.  As a youth pastor it was not uncommon for him to be a guide our leadership retreats and as I have served at various churches we often found ourselves having conversations lasting hours on leadership, strategy, and pursuing Christ in our day to day.  I am excited that he will be joining in the conversation here on [...]

I have been thinking about entitlement lately.  We live in a society that implies entitlement to everything from luxury cars to fast food.  It seems that everywhere I turn there is someone or something telling me what I deserve, what I have a right to, what I am entitled to… regardless of whether I have worked to achieve it or not. As I have been processing the recent events in Egypt I have found myself [...]

Matt Note:  Joel Rainey is the Director of Missions for the Mid-Maryland Baptist Association.  His passion for church planting is evident in every conversation that he has and his book Planting Churches in the Real World is a great resource for anyone trying to do just that.  I have asked him to share some of what he is seeing in the Southern Baptist church planting world, and over the next few weeks I am excited [...]

Ah, Valentine’s Day. The day our society takes on a yearly basis to celebrate that which we really know little about.  On a yearly basis we get inundated with ads for chocolate, flowers, expensive dinners, and cell phones.  This evening, in honor of Valentine’s day, I will be sweeping Theresa off her feet with sushi… because nothing says romance quite like raw fish. With all that is going on in the world around us, I [...]

I have been reminded lately of something that David Gergen said at the 2009 Willow Creek Leadership Summit: “If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.”  This quote has so many applications in ministry and has come up a bunch in my conversations of late, and it has started me thinking about how we relate with one another. This year, for the first time in my life, [...]

Matt Note:  This is a repost from J.R. Brigg’s blog about an upcoming conference that I am pretty excited about.  No numbers talk, no grand new idea to save your church, and no guilt for not being super pastor… just a few days doing life together, being honest about where we are at, and remembering why we do what we do. Back in August I wrote a post on the blog called EPIC FAIL Pastors’ Conference. [...]

I love hockey. I have long seen hockey as a game of beauty.  The flow and rhythm of the game coupled with the creativity of the players elevates the game nearly to an art.  My favorite current player is Alex Ovechkin, the captain of the Washington Capitals. As in any sport the captain of a hockey team is expected to be a leader on the ice and off.  While he is the only player on [...]

Late last week I was quite taken by a photograph that has gone viral.  On February second the picture to the right was part of a tweet by a young lady named Nevine sent out via twitter with the following tweet: A pic I took yesterday of Christians protecting Muslims during their prayers#jan25 http://yfrog.com/h02gvclj. A follow up tweet made this even more powerful: Bear in mind that this pic was taken a month after Alexandria [...]