Tag: Missional
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3 Reasons Why Suffering is Essential in God’s Kingdom
From the safety of our homes in the US, being persecuted for our faith sounds like something that only happens in outlandish countries or ancient biblical stories. To be interrogated, threatened, beaten and jailed for our faith in Jesus is just something that doesn’t typically happen in America. When suffering does occur in other places…
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4 Tips for Finding the Person Of Peace
As I was riding my motorbike through the rain in some rural Asian village I came to a huge brown puddle across the road. Over the years I have crossed hundreds of puddles, streams and rivers. I thought I had this down so I decided to go straight through. It was murky and deeper than…
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Re-prioritizing Easter: 3 Ways to Share the Gospel and Collect Eggs
About 30 eggs filled with my wife’s “healthiest candies” lay hidden in the small patch of grass in our front yard. After a short reading of the Easter story in Luke 24 my three kids ransacked the green grass filling their baskets with the treasured eggs. I snapped a few really cute photos of the…
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The Lack of Cultural Diversity in the Missional Movement: Where All My Colored People At?
I was a ghetto Asian-American juvenile delinquent, fresh in the faith, when I first walked into a southern California mega-church with a group of other knuckleheads wearing saggy Dickies and oversized t-shirts. This church was located in the heart of one of the most ethnically diverse cities in America and we were excited about connecting…
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The Lack of Mission in the Missional Movement: Let’s Just Tweet About It
These days everyone has the vernacular down. The word “missional” has been trending for the last 15 years among post-modern, culturally sensitive followers of Jesus. We’re changing the way we communicate with the un-churched by trying not to sound so religious. That’s great, but changing what we say versus changing what we do are two…
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What Next? The 4 Stages of Launching Church Movements
As church planters, “What next?” is probably one of the questions we ask the most. What do we do after reaching the lost? How do we make disciples and train them to train others? How do we form groups and catalyze a movement of reproducing churches? There are so many methods and answers out there…
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A Vision for Missional Living
In our part of the world travel is determined by the weather. No matter how much we plan and prepare our trips can be cut short by the onslaught of monsoons, washed out roads, flooded paths and knee deep mud. In the dry season we are faced with clouds of dust that cake our motorcycle…
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How to Change the World for Jesus in 7 Easy Steps
The secret (which is not really a secret) to magnifying the fame of God and bringing lasting global change and is to make disciples…who make disciples, who make disciples. In a previous post, I said I’d give you further details about a process called Training for Trainers (T4T). T4T is a simple & reproducible process…
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Training Trainers: A New Paradigm for Discipleship
No one likes to be told they are doing something wrong, especially leaders, pastors and church planters. We’ve devoted our lives to growing the Church but have we been doing it all wrong? I hate it when I’m wrong. My pride always says that I am right. But my pride can’t argue with results. The…
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Easter Doesn’t Exist…For The Unreached
Last week I found myself with a broken motorbike surrounded by jungle and stranded in a mountain pass with no cell phone reception. There was no other choice but to split the group up and push the heavy ass bike back the way we came – up and down the mountain in the heat of…
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You Are Not Asian: Using Culture As A Ministry Crutch
You are not Asian. You are not any color. Your identity is not based in your cultural roots. What you are, is a beacon of God’s image. You are meant to shine His glory in dark places. You are meant to be God’s living story and go wherever He tells you to go. The problem…
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Osama Bin Laden and Church Multiplication Movements
One day we Americans turn on the television to find out that Osama Bin Laden is dead. The U.S. President announces that the most wanted terrorist in the world has been double-tapped by a team of highly skilled Navy Seals during a secret raid. That’s so freakin awesome but how did this happen? For more…
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Radical Faith is BS
I love David Platt’s book, Radical. It’s taken the western church by storm and I resonate with anything that upsets the status quo – but the title can be a little misleading. There is no such thing as “radically” following Jesus. It’s only radical because we Christians are content with a surface level faith. Jesus…
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Thankful for Diarrhea
I awoke to a sharp pain in my stomach. It was the middle of the night in a rural and remote Asian village. The house was cold. Of course it was, it stood on stilts and there were no doors or windows. Speaking of which there were no bathrooms or latrines either. Not a single…
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The Joy of Persecution
A few weeks ago we took a sweet little boat ride up river to visit dear friends. No big deal. Just two hours of zigzagging through mazes of dead trees in a tiny leaking boat, to reach a remote village in the mountains with no electricity, phones or latrines, where there was a real possibility…
The Asian Rough Rider 