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The Solid-Slushy-Liquid Approach to Prioritizing Plans

On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, Mike Gafa describes the “solid-slushy-liquid” tool that can be used in church or corporate settings to help organize and prioritize plans. As you work through a planning process, you may have a number of potential plans that you would like to complete in a year. However, you may know instinctively that having too many plans may …

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Small Churches Matter

In a super-sized society, we can default to assuming that bigger is always better.  To the contrary, 12 ounces of a carbonated, sugar-saturated beverage may be better for us than 32 ounces.  Likewise, expecting a Chihuahua to grow to the size of a St. Bernard is unrealistic.  Besides, their ears would be as big as satellite dishes. In some cases, …

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Deep Change

What is Deep Change? This is a great question posed by an insightful leader in a church in our region of the Reformed Church in America. Since our society is more akin to the New Testament world than the one in which I grew up after World War II, and the North American Church has been largely in decline for …

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Being a Missionally Minded Church from the Start

On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, Eliza Cortez Bast, Coordinator for Local Missional Engagement for the Reformed Church in America, speaks on how churches can be missionally minded from the Start. What it means to be missional from the onset? What does it look like for a church to be more than just Sunday? What does it look like for a church …

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Peeling Back the Onion

At a little campground in Kearney, Nebraska, we sat in a tent in a big circle. I was a youth pastor, and we were in the travel stages of an adventure trip to the Grand Tetons. I brought a little exercise to the group to facilitate the bonding experience and convey my hopes and expectations.  This was our first night …

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Biblical Principles of Multiplying Multi-Ethnic Churches

On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, teacher, writer and minister Agshin Jafarov speaks about how scripture informs planting multi-ethnic churches. For a more detailed post on this subject, go to Agshin’s blog at http://www.biblicaltransformations.com When multi-ethnic churches are planted, certain principles can be followed that come from scripture. The first principle is the centrality of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the unifying principle …

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The Great Light

  “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have …

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Joy in Mission

A Note from Luminex: Throughout the Advent season, our Monday blogs are centered on the Advent theme of the week (Faith, Hope, Joy, Love, Christ), and about how the theme in some way informs our mission to multiply. Today’s post is on Joy, and comes from Andy Bossardet, Coordinator for Equipping Thriving Congregations (for the Reformed Church in America). “The secret source …

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Multiplying Hope

A Note from Luminex: Throughout the Advent season, our Monday blogs are centered on the Advent theme of the week (Faith, Hope, Joy, Love, Christ), and about how the theme in some way informs our mission to multiply. Today’s post is on Hope, and comes from Art Wiers, Luminex Church Health Catalyst. Occasionally I am confronted in conversations by individuals who …

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Faith: Wait for It

A Note from Luminex: Starting today and extending through the next four weeks, our Monday blogs will be centered on the Advent theme of the week (Faith, Hope, Joy, Love, Christ), and about how the theme in some way informs our mission to multiply. We begin our series with Dan Ackerman sharing thoughts on faith. Embracing faith is never easy. I …