I frequently hear pastors say, “Our church is a church plant.” These days I have to ask what “church plant” means. The best I can discern is that being a church plant possibility has something to do with the age of the church. However, even with duration of existence there […]
Discipleship
Contextualization is vital to Kingdom labors. A great deal of energy and effort is expended every year among missiologists and missionaries who discuss this topic. And I do not believe we should ever cease talking about it. No one is culturally neutral. All of our disciple making methods and strategies […]
Reducing the Stumbling Block before THE Stumbling Block
I launched Strike the Match on March 12, 2015 (“Who was St. Patrick with Ed Smither”). Season 4 concluded last week. I have enjoyed these four seasons of 64 episodes. Thank you for listening and sharing. You are in 139 countries, with the U. S., Japan, U. K., India, and […]
Strike the Match Turns Four
In this post, I continue my Apostolic Imagination series with some thoughts on rethinking purpose and missions. You may find the previous two posts HERE and HERE. Biblical Purpose is in Biblical Language As long as we continue to use extra-biblical language to describe the work of the Church, we […]
Apostolic Imagination: Rethinking Purpose and Mission
Like many of you, I have been grieving the present conflict within the United Methodist Church. While I am very thankful for the result of yesterday’s vote, my heart breaks that such a matter had to come to the floor of a national meeting. I am not a member of […]
Oh! That they would continue in the Spirit of Wesley ...
Last week, two U. S. news stories broke on sexual abuse: one addressing the sexual abuse of children connected to New Tribes Mission (Ethnos360) and one addressing sexual abuse of 700 people at the hands of Southern Baptist church leaders. In this special episode of Strike the Match, Dr. Tate […]