Foreign tissue rejection

Foreign tissue rejection

Every church, team or organization develops its own culture. It has a certain DNA in terms of how the people relate to each other, what they do, and the values they live out. Sometimes when someone new joins the team, there is a mismatch of that DNA–...
Agenda harmony

Agenda harmony

As you plant a church, you need to help people understand what it means to follow Jesus based on the DNA you disciple into them. Obviously, this is harder with people who have previous church experience than with those who come to faith through your ministry....

Is it catching?

Craig Whitney of ELI Church Planting talks about the role of relational evangelism in planter effectiveness:  “One of the four characteristics the ELI measures [in church planters] is relational evangelism. One of the things we asked in our research was what...

Values: the roots of ministry

Your ministry flows out of your values. Picture the whole church as a tree: the values are the roots. You can’t see them, but they are responsible for virtually everything that happens above ground. The roots produce the fruit. If the fruit is good, you assume the...

Which came first—the disciple or the church?

The DNA of the church is found in the gospels. When the church was birthed in Acts, it was a matter of living out that DNA. As Jesus’ disciples made more disciples, the result was churches. Do you see the progression? The result of making disciples was the gathering...

Fighting discouragement

For those who want to spark change toward missional incarnational ministry, discouragement is a constant battle. For change at this level to occur, we’re actually talking about DNA. That’s the toughest thing to change once it’s already taken root. Recognize that it’s...

A grove of aspen trees

Some of you may have seen this image before. It’s the root structure of a grove of aspen trees. This has become the guiding image for the network of missional house churches I’m helping start. The aspen grove is actually the world’s largest organism as the entire...

Elephants or mice?

Sometimes the reason church multiplication doesn’t happen is because we think of church as a big entity:  you have to multiply a worship service, a staff, a children’s program, etc. It’s like an elephant multiplying. It can be done, but it’s difficult and it takes a...