church and family
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To Lead Well, Pray Well
Continuing what has become a series of posts on leading missional communities, those who lead well also pray well. While this is primarily about missional communities, I see this in my own life when it comes to my marriage, family, work, or anything I’m in charge of, the more I consider these things in prayer…
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To Lead Well, Share Well
I was meeting with a leader of one of our Community Groups who was exhausted. He was ready to give up, discouraged by the lack of participation from the rest of the community and felt like he was doing too much. He thought the best answer was to quit leading and end the Community Group.…
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To Lead Well, Align Well
As my wife and I were preparing to have our first son, Eli, we had to make decisions about our vehicles. The plan was to sell the ’96 red Ford Mustang she had purchased in high school and to purchase a mom-mobile sedan and keep our Nissan Xterra I had been driving since college. Unfortunately,…
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To Lead Well, Be Faithful
Most people assume leadership involves a lot of activity, setting forth an amazing vision and doing monumental things or accomplishing many tasks. When we look at leaders, they seem to be incredibly busy and while leadership naturally lends itself to more activity, the only way to ever lead well is through faithfulness. Whether it’s in a…
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Forming Missional Communities
It is one thing to grasp and get excited about a vision for missional communities and a completely different thing to go about forming missional communities. The vision for gospel-centered communities on mission is compelling, exciting, and stirs us within towards embodying scriptural truth. I find it hard not to be attracted to pursuing this…
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Missional Community Crossroad Moments
I intended to go deeper into the Missional Community life cycle this week, but I realized that my posts from Tuesday & Wednesday assumed progress in knowing God, loving one another and loving the world. But what happens when a missional community starts to face the reality that they are struggling in those areas? The…
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Life Cycle of Missional Communities in New Areas
Yesterday, I wrote about the typical life cycle of a missional community within an area where there is an existing gospel presence from the church. The typical group goes through stages of formation, fun, messiness, mission, and multiplication, but if the church is called to extend the gospel of Jesus Christ to areas of their…
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The Life Cycle of a Missional Community
At the beginning of each new season of Community Groups at Apostles Church, we gather together as leaders to re-focus on the gospel and our core values while also highlighting important points of emphasis for the season. Back in January we gathered for 3 hours, had amazing conversation, shared a meal and communion with one…
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Gospel Enjoyment: You Live for what you Love
How do you order your life? How do you spend your time, money, and emotions? You only live for what you love. Some of us may not think this is true, we could look at our jobs and describe our frustrations, but there are reasons you stay at your job. It could be to support…
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The Source of Gospel Enjoyment
Gospel enjoyment is centering on and celebrating the finished work of Jesus Christ in His life, death and resurrection. Gospel enjoyment recognizes that you only live for what you love, so for the Christian or anyone else for that matter, we must evaluate if we love what is most lovely. The good news of Jesus…
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Missional Community Implications: For the World
On Wednesday I wrote that pursuing missional communities will affect your life and yesterday I wrote about how it will affect your church, and today we’ll look at the affect on the world. I genuinely believe that a church that pursues missional communities will see the beneficial impact in their community, but also an even…
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Missional Community Implications: For Church
I’m a big fan of missional communities as I believe the scriptures clearly articulate the power and intent of God for a community to demonstrate the gospel of Jesus Christ through their love for one another and their neighbors. It’s becoming a larger conversation and many churches are considering the idea. As they consider it,…
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Missional Community Implications: For Life
As our church continues to aim toward being a collection of gospel-centered communities on mission (Missional Communities), I’ve noticed that many people are not ready for some of the real implications that come with this idea. Even as many other churches wrestle through this, one thing that must be acknowledged is that pursuing this Book…
Logan Gentry 