Introducing 12Church

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Today I’m very pleased to announce that 12Church, a long time theoretical concept, has finally come to some sense of fruition. At least the seeding of it has happened in that we have officially started our alternative model of church based on missional communities, with some other little tweaks to the set-up. The basic idea is we’re built around groups that have a heavy emphasis on evangelism.

We never plan to have a building. We never plan to have a full-time pastor. In fact, my role, even at this initial roll-out stage is just kept to 20 hours a week and we intend to keep it that way. It should be a lean mean, scalable, sustainable system.

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Disciple Making

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In my last post I mentioned that I had started another podcast called Disciple Making and I thought what I would do today is simply share the first episode of that with you. What you’ll hear is a bit of the story of my co-host’s journey of disciple making, which I think you’ll find interesting, and will give you an idea of what the Disciple Making podcast is all about.

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Prolific Quality Output

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This post is commemorating the 300th episode of my podcast Priority Pastor. I was toying with several different options and I’ll explain all the different factors in a while. I was considering making this the last one of this podcast, making a big shift in the podcast itself, just mixing it up in some way, or just continuing as I have.

The reason I started this podcast was due to a course I was taking that really challenged the idea of publishing content regularly. I actually initially started publishing a blog post pretty much every day, which is a bit of work for me. I love writing and think I write fairly well, but you’re moving towards perfectionism when you’re writing (at least I am) and it was a lot of hard work.

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It’s Not Your Job

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Just the other day I was listening to a pastor who is a Christian leader who I respect greatly, but he said something that made me kinda sit up in my seat and question what I heard. I came to the conclusion that I had to disagree with him, and in disagreeing, I realized what this man stated explains a lot of challenges that we’re facing in the church right now.

The statement had to do with this fellow expressing his call to build the church. When he said that, I stopped and thought to myself that Jesus is the one who builds the church and that our call is to make disciples that as we make disciples. The church grows and Jesus puts the body together and builds the church.

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Measuring Ministry Success

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Today I’m just going to read the table of contents of an old book. I’d be surprised if I’ve never referenced this book in the past because it’s a classic, incredibly helpful, encouraging book in all areas and all times and places for pastors. It’s a book called “Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome” by Kent and Barbara Hughes. It came out in 1987, with a rework in 2008.

I came across this book early in my ministry life. In fact, it may have actually been on internship where someone recommended it to me or in my pastoral training before I was a pastor. I became a pastor in 1990, so it would have been out by then.

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