On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, Art Wiers, who serves on the core leadership team of the region of the Great Lakes, gives us insight on how we should ‘think’ about church and why this matters. I like to take a moment to think church. People who grew up in the church would think about membership as their primary orientation to church. …
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 …
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 …
The F.A.I.T.H Filter
On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, Mike Gafa describes the F.A.I.T.H. filter and how utilizing this tool helps enable successful strategic planning for leadership teams. Before you lock down strategic plans, I recommend that you ensure that your plans pass through a tool called the “F.A.I.T.H. Filter.” F stands for flexible, because plans need to be held loosely, being flexible to adapt …
A Worthwhile Resolution: Luminex Prayer Movement
Resolutions are often considered while on the threshold of entering a New Year. Most of us can think of things that we ought to be more resolved about in our daily lives. I want to ask you to consider a resolution that could have tremendous impact beyond what you or I can imagine. Would you personally consider making a resolution …
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 …
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 …
What is Deep Change?
On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, Rick Veenstra emphasizes the importance of deep change in your ministry and the level of effort and time it takes to achieve transformational systemic change. The church in America has basically two choices: deep change or slow death. Slow death is kind of obvious. Deep change is not so obvious. Recently, someone asked Rick, “What is …
Fostering Kingdom-Oriented Prayer in the Congregation
To kick off our second season of Whiteboard Wednesday, we have Jon Sherrill, who serves as the lead pastor at Fifth Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, discussing kingdom-focused prayer and how to foster it in your church. Kingdom-focused prayer has taken a greater priority for Jon and his community recently. Through collaboration with other churches to plant a new church …
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 …