Jeff's Musings

Dave Ferguson closed the day’s conference with a talk on Rapid Reproduction. Dave and four friends launched Community Christian Church in the west suburbs of Chicago. CCC averages 4,600 in attendance at eight sites every weekend. He co-founded the NewThing Network (www.newthing.org), a catalys...

Shawn Lovejoy is the founding and Lead Pastor at Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, GA. In six years his Mountain Lake has grown from 4 people to over 2,000. Shawn spoke this afternoon on leveraging vision in your new church plant.  He focused specifically on the church planter as a prophet and h...

The morning main session speaker at the 2007 Exponential Conference was Ed Stetzer.  Ed’s passion is helping church planters and established churches in becoming missional as outlined in the Bible. Unfortunately many pastors and churches have no clue what it means to be missional. Mission...

Good Morning! Quick update before breakfast.  Yesterday I got to see some friends I hadn’t seen in awhile and meet some friends whom I had only spoken with on the phone. The first friend I ran into was Ed Stetzer, who is the Director of Research and Missiologist for NAMB and has authored ...

In the first session we heard Wayne Cordeiro who pastor New Hope Christian Fellowship in Honolulu, Hawaii. He shared that the weather in Honolulu was boring, sunny and 80 degrees everyday. He should try out Cleveland’s weather if he wants some variety. Since starting New Hope in 1995 the churc...

Darin Avery and I are in Orlando at the National New Church Conference.  We arrived yesterday to the wonderful sunshine of central Florida and no humidity which was a welcome surprise.  We did not register for any of the pre-conference conferences. Could that be classsified as an oxymoron?...

Preaching with a goal of transforming lives through an articulated purpose involves careful consideration of the audience. The importance of the listener, the power of Scripture, and a holistic approach are all components of preaching with a specific purpose. The dynamics of the preacher-listener re...

What comes to mind when you think of worship? Is it a formal occasion? Is it a joyous occasion? Does it contain certain rituals? Are you involved? Are you praising God? Are you learning? Are you hearing from God? Are you in contemplation? Are you singing? Are you praying? Are you alone, or with othe...

To serve as Jesus served, requires commitment In 1986, I went on my first mission trip and it was to Romeo, MI where we worked with a small church that was struggling, but wanted to reach their community. It was then that I got the vision that the church needed to be externally focused. It […...

There are several things about ministry that are not glamorous and exciting. I will tell you this, serving people is one of the things I love about ministry. Last week in Tennessee I shared with a group of people that I am having more fun now than I have ever had in 17 years of […]...