Zero Church Aptly Named?

A few posts ago, I alluded to a mailer I received that provided a pretty good example of a “fringe building” church rather than a “core building” church. 
Note that I have never attended this church nor do I know anything about it or their leadership…I’ve only received the mailer.  Therefore, the only comments I intend to [...]

Choosing Sides in the Unseen War

“When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose sides.”

The opening line to a recent Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode (above) struck me as applicable to our discussion.  In his comments from a couple of posts ago, Bob ended with “At least we’ll all know where we stand!”  One day, we will certainly know where [...]

Fringe to Core; World to Core

So far, we have presented our fundamental mission as moving people from the ‘fringe’ to the ‘core’ and from the ‘world’ to the core.  In this post, we’ll begin to explore how we might do that.  Before we begin, let me say that while many of these terms may sound familiar, you will see in [...]

And so, our mission is…

… to help willing people move from the fringe to the core (discipleship) and from the world to the core (evangelism).
My observation is that the majority of local churches today, particularly evangelical churches in the west, are focused mostly on the evangelistic portion of this mission using mostly a strategy of “attractive” worship services.  It’s staggering [...]

Who is living on the ‘fringe’ of the Church?

I don’t want to belabor the ‘problem statement’ too much before getting into some thoughts on the solution, but I think it’s wise to go one level deeper before moving on.
Let’s briefly elaborate on ’core’, ‘fringe’, and ‘world’ then conclude with “so what?”
Core
These are obviously genuine believers in Jesus Christ.  They know their Bibles, or are working [...]

What does today’s inauguration teach us about the need for discipleship?

I think it has less to do with who is being inaugurated than with the perspective that the ’fringe’ (see my last post) currently has…a perspective that has led to the decision the we have made together as a country.  The fringe seems to have bought into the world’s idea that any change brings hope.  The very fact that we’re changing [...]

Let’s begin…

…with a couple of assertions and see what happens.
There are three kinds of people in this world: “Core”, “Fringe”, and “World”.  The ‘core’ includes obvious, genuine, mature believers in Jesus Christ.  The ’world’ includes those who are obviously not believers but one day still could be.  The ‘fringe’ includes those who either are believers and yet [...]

Why would anyone start a blog?

Quite frankly, I don’t know. But then again, I did not know why anyone would want to join facebook until I did!
This blog is not intended to be simply my random ramblings. Rather, I want to stream some thoughts on the state of the Church and gather input in preparation for the launch of a [...]