Here are my notes from a church planting webinar I attended today: Lessons from the Trenches. The host/leader was Andy Wood, senior pastor at South Bay Church in Silicon Valley. It was fantastic! ******** Andy Woods - South Bay ChurchFebruary 2, 2012 Lessons from the Trenches 1. The importance of giving the unreached a voice at the table. Typically there is no one in a decision making position that represents the lost. How will this decision help us reach the unchurched person in our community? How hot is my passion for the lost? How are we doing making decisions with the lost in mind? 2. There are two types of health indicators: leading and lagging. What do you measures? Lagging = Bodies. Seats. First-time guests. Budget. Baptisms. Leading = Are more people praying? (What impacts the lagging indicators?). What stats are you giving attention to? What leading factors are contributing…
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This is the sermon I preached last weekend at the close of our Faith series. Obedient Faith from Mountainview on Vimeo.
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I'm in a Wednesday morning Bible study with a group of leaders at our church. We've been working our way through the book of Acts. This morning we landed in Acts 19. Tucked in verses 13-16 is a little story about a group of Jews who are trying to cast our demons in the name of Jesus. It's not working. Finally, the evil spirit speaks up: "Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?" That happens to be a great question to everyone trying to pass themselves off as something they are not. Then the demon-possessed man gives the seven sons of Sceva such a beating that they run off naked and bleeding (never a good combination). Here's the result: "When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held…
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“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur.” -- John Wooden
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I just read an interesting article in Wired magazine about how we learn. The author interviewed Robert Bjork, the director of UCLA's Learning and Forgetting Lab (yes, there is such a place). Below are a few take-homes. Interleaving. Instead of trying to master one topic or skill at a time, interleaving is the process of rotating through several related skills or topics. According to Bjork, memory works better when many different connections are made as opposed to just one. Get mobile. In other words, vary the places where you study. If you will need to know the information in more than one location, Bjork suggests studying in more than one location. Wait. "The more difficult and involved the retrieval, the more beneficial it is." Bjork suggests spacing your studying times in a way that requires the mind to dig deeper and work harder at remembering what you studied the first…
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