Developing a Strategy for Missions


One of the courses I teach at Beeson Divinity School is Contemporary Issues and Strategies in Missions. It is usually offered as a January class and began again today. After twenty years of training pastors and church planters, I have noticed that many struggle in the area of strategic planning. […]

5 Practices of Strategic Leaders


Authors are strange birds. We keep up with minute details about our books. And one detail we know well is the publication date. My thirteenth book is to be released later this year. While I know the years when my books were published, I do not know the exact dates […]

Month of Book Birthdays


Do you really?  That’s what these guys say. Understanding context is important to our labors. Peoples are shaped and defined by cultures.  While biblical prescriptions are ultimate, contextualization is crucial to what we do. When the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14), God contextualized Himself as never […]

If You’re Gonna Play in Texas, You Gotta have a ...



I recently wrote a post on the importance of doing our homework on upgs living in our neighborhoods.  A failure to do this research is poor stewardship.  Such omissions often mean we end up pouring more resources and people into reaching reached people groups. In this post, I want to […]

Knowing Utah: Another Excellent Example


If you are just joining this blog, then you are reading at a time when I’m in the middle of a series on missionary strategy.  Previous posts are located below: Developing a Strategy for Missions Future and Process of Missionary Strategy What is Strategic Planning? In light of our definition […]

The Big 5 of Strategy Development


In Developing a Strategy for Missions, we operate from the following definition: Strategic planning is a prayerfully discerned, Spirit-guided process of preparation, development, implementation, and evaluation of the necessary steps involved for missionary endeavors. Prayerfully Discerned The development of mission strategy is a supernatural process. While resources abound on the […]

What is Strategic Planning?