The church has moved online. And this year has taught us that some aspects of church are harder than others to practice on the internet. When I ask folks what they have missed most about church this past year it’s the fellowship, the relationships, the sense of life together. Rowan Williams notes, “Church is what […]
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I’m excited about my friend J.R. Briggs’ forthcoming book and accompanying master class, A Time to Heal. In the ashes of a pandemic world, what we need most right now, is healing. the church needs to reclaim a central aspect of our identity as a community of healing. In my latest book, Fresh Expressions in […]
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Maybe you remember them too. I remember the days of sitting in the places where my sermon-juices most easily used to start flowing. I remember the plastic booths and tables, background music and conversation, flavored coffee, and chocolate chip bagels. I remember the meetings and lunches and opening the Bible at tables. I remember the […]
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Loon Mountain Ministry is a community of believers and others who are passionate about God and the outdoors. They’ve been gathering outdoors for non-denominational worship services for over twenty years at the summit of beautiful Loon Mountain in Lincoln, New Hampshire.
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“Our church wants to reach out to our neighbors, we just don’t know where to start.” Over the past five years, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this from church leaders across the country. Fresh Expressions has been inspiring a missionary movement in the United States since it came across “the […]
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“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop on your conversation, but I wanted you to know I don’t go to church but would go to something like that.”
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Chris Backert, national director of Fresh Expressions US, says that too few “churches in North America have really grappled with the post-Christian reality.” Yet he believes that if churches seriously invest in tactical, contextual communities, the American church “can still make the shifts that are needed to be fruitful in the future. If churches wait another 10 years, that will be challenging.”
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“Tell me, what do you have in your house?” Sometimes people look at me like I have three heads when I share with them what it means to start fresh expressions of church. For some, it’s because the whole idea is difficult to wrap their minds around, but others just don’t know where to start. […]
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This gift of discomfort was the catalyst needed to birth a movement of fresh expressions of church.
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Here’s the current reality in North Carolina: On any given Sunday only 22% of the population in Western North Carolina is in worship. Over the past two decades not one county in the US has grown in overall church attendance/participation and that includes areas where mega-churches exist. When the overall population of the US has […]
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