At the recent Dwell Conference in NYC, we were able to put a brand new book into the hands of 300 church leaders. Compelled by Love, subtitled The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living is the new book by our friend Ed Stetzer and Acts 29 church planter Philip Nation. As we ... Read More
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Well, this blog post is being written while I sit on a train with my lovely wife Grace traveling between New York and Philadelphia. It’s been a busy but cool few weeks. Read More
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It has been a super busy few weeks and I thought it would be fun to catch folks up on some of the highlights... Read More
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Almost 1,200 people attended the Text and Context Acts 29 Boot Camp this week in uncharacteristically sunny Seattle for three days of fantastic teaching. Among those were spiritually hungry people from 46 states and 11 countries, 49 Acts 29 pastors, 23 couples to be assessed as Acts 29 candidates and Mars Hill Church staff and an army of volunteers. Read More
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“You [Acts 29 Pastors] are taken to be the essence of cool by many young ministers, and I personify not cool,” said Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church and founder of 9Marks, in his address at our Chicago Boot Camp last week. Dever, conspicuously clad in suit and tie, united the commonality of our mission by saying, “Our differences are enough to separate some of my friends..." Read More
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The St Louis Metro Baptist Association has formed a Church Planting Fund called “Show Me Partnership.” It is a way that people can assist those church planters whose funds from the Missouri Baptist Convention will be cut off January 1, 2008 because of a decision made by the MBC on December 10, 2007. Read More
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Acts 29 Network and the Southern Baptists share the same mission: to seek and to save the lost; to go into all of the world and share the gospel of Jesus and to baptize and teach the believers through the local church. For this reason, we love the SBC, have appreciated our partnerships throughout the country and are now mourning the loss of our fellowship with the Missouri Southern Baptist Convention. Read More
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Missional Leaders, Church Planters, and those supporting church planting from the Metro-Philadelphia Region and other surrounding areas are invited to hear Ed Stetzer, Missiologist in Residence for Lifeway Resources, for the afternoon to look at... Read More
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Text and Context is the National Resurgence Conference and Acts 29 Boot camp featuring John Piper, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll and Jim Gilmore among others... we are looking at 1000 people in attendance... Read More
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Lots of questions have come up in why we use video for delivering sermons during church services at many locations, so I did a little lecture to answer the questions for anyone who cares: Read More
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In February 2008 I am publishing my next book along with my friend Dr. Gerry Breshears. It will be titled Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions. I am really excited about this book since it is my first hard-bound book and is by far better than anything else I have published to date. Additionally, my friends at Crossway have been great to work with. They are aiming for 50,000 sales the first year, which is a big deal and would put the book on the New York Times Bestseller list but, alas, nowhere near the level of all the books on flying people and the end times. This book is also the first in an entire line of books called Re:Lit (Resurgence Literature). To help get the books sales started, we’ve done two things for you and anyone else you can help me get the word out to. Read More
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It is very humbling to see how God is significantly using our network to influence and shape the church planting culture. Acts 29 Network exists to start churches that plant churches. Next week in Raleigh, North Carolina, over 250 individuals will be joining us at the new location of Vintage21 for a two day boot camp. Our boot camps are simple but profound: emphasize solid theology and contextualizing the gospel. We will not waver on either of these commitments. We won’t water down our theology to reach more people and we won’t attack the culture in the name of Christianity. We are planting churches that are missionaries in their respective communities sent by Christ with the gospel (John 20:21). Read More
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As President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, one of the joys of our work is networking with various denominations, as well as other networks, to see gospel-centered, Jesus-loving, Bible-preaching, risk-taking men planting churches as fast as possible. Some of the church planters in our network are in independent churches, some are Presbyterians, some are Baptist, and there are a host of other such partnerships that we thank God for. Read More
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Acts 29 Network's next boot camp will be on the East Coast in Raleigh, NC hosted by Vintage 21 on September 19-20th. The Acts 29 Network desires to cultivate localized missionaries who will first reach their surrounding cultures and then branch out to the world. This is carried out by helping qualified leaders called by God to plant new churches and replant declining churches in our nation and around the world. Read More
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Tim Smith, Mars Hill Church's worship pastor, has a deep passion to equip and encourage other worship leaders as both theologians and musicians. As a result, he is now embarking on a series of new projects that I wanted to let everyone know about in the following interview we conducted. Read More
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The one thing that I appreciate most about Mark Driscoll is not his communication skills although he is a brilliant and gifted communicator. It is not his wit and humor and ability to make people laugh in almost any context. It is not his photographic memory or his understanding of complicated doctrinal and theological concepts. I think his IQ is on par with genius but none of that really matters that much to me. What impresses me most is... Read More
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Religion says, if I obey, God will love me. Gospel says, because God loves me, I can obey. Religion has good people & bad people. Gospel has only repentant and unrepentant people. Religion values... Read More
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I have met some bloggers out there and they are all interesting in their own way. Anybody who is excited to put their ideas, pictures, random thoughts, ramblings on the web for anyone to see has to be partly nuts. Some give it a go for a short time and find it taxing to regularly write things the whole world can see and a few might find interest. Others become addicted to blogging. It is these cats that I write about. Read More
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Acts 29 provides boot camps for the purpose of setting the theological compass for missional church planting. Last week we had the biggest boot camp of our existence. Over 350 people converged upon Seattle for the Acts 29 Church Planter’s Boot Camp. 32 men and their wives were assessed as potential planters with Acts 29 Network. Over 42 Acts 29 member pastors came in to assess. 20 pastors began their 6 month training to be a church planting coach. Read More
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Relational Rage is a disturbing characteristic within the body of Christ. Professing Christians are simultaneously dependant on Christ’s forgiveness while displaying a colossal reconciliatory deficiency. In other words, church people are intentionally hurting one another with no real attempt to seek forgiveness—the gospel message of reconciliation. As a young Christian in my teens, I noticed this serious gap of inconsistency. It turned me off at first and then as a pastor it engulfed me to try to correct this obvious flaw in the body of Christ. I found it to be deeper than I expected. While trying to mediate between two feuding church members (as a pastor in the church), I became the retaliatory victim of their animosity and rebellion. They weren’t interested in the gospel being applied to their fury. I finally stopped throwing my pearls before the swine and concentrated instead on ministering to those whose heart was on the gospel. But pigs still stink even if we try to ignore them. And they roam freely throughout the church snorting and rooting and defecating around pre-believers and new believers. We wonder why the church stinks. Read More
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