If you are in the Boone area (or don't mind driving), please consider attending this upcoming seminar our church is hosting:
Friendship Evangelism Seminar
My dad will be coming up to Boone at the end of February to teach a seminar called "Friendship Evangelism." Here is the info:
Friendship Evangelism
a seminar with
Dr. Wayne McDill
Author and Senior Preaching Professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Friday, Feb 26, 6:30-8:30pm Saturday, Feb 27, 8:30am-12pm
The banquet hall of The High Country Home Builder’s Association 755 Hwy. 105 By-Pass, Boone, NC hosted by Highland Christian Fellowship
Find out more about the seminar and download a FREE copy of Dr. McDill’s E-Book
Showing the Face of God: An Inductive Strategy for Evangelism
@ highlandchristianfellowship.org
The Purpose and Vision for Highland Christian Fellowship
On Sunday our church (Highland Christian Fellowship) affirmed our Constitution and Covenant for the first time! They describe who we are and who we hope to be. Included is our purpose and vision:
Our purpose as a local body is to
- Love God.
- Love people.
- Make disciples.
Our vision is to make disciples of all nations by leading people to faith in Jesus Christ and teaching them to walk with him by living in loving obedience to his commandments; to accomplish this
- by strengthening families in godly marriages and discipleship of children,
- by building a healthy body active in individual and corporate prayer and ministry,
- by serving the poor, sick, imprisoned, and unprotected,
- by establishing new, reproducing church fellowships, and
- by participating in and supporting the worldwide effort to make disciples of all nations.
Teaching Audio
I have just added to this site a teaching audio widget (located in the right column) with which you can listen to sermons I have uploaded. You can also download or subscribe to my sermons as a podcast. It all works through sermon.net. I just uploaded one I taught on Father's Day two years ago at Highland Christian Fellowship about turning the hearts of fathers toward their children. In it I explain how parenting fits into the biblical vision of making disciples for Christ.
The Church Without Walls
I recently read this article: “Crazy Passion: Francis Chan Keeps Pushing and Pushing to Make More and More Disciples” by John Brandon in Christianity Today, Oct 2009. I like some of the things I hear about what he is doing. Here are some snippets of the article:
“In church, rather than rehab people, we just put them in a wheelchair and say, ‘We will do everything for you,’” says Chan. “‘You don’t have to witness to your neighbors. We will send out fliers and do TV shows and evangelize for you. You don’t have to counsel your neighbors; just give them the church’s phone number. Now we are saying, ‘You be the discipler. You have the Holy Spirit in you, and we want to equip you to reach your neighbors.'
"Chan’s long-term plan involves building the church without having a building. . . . The experiment is a way to find out how the church can grow without the limits of a building. . . . The structure is intended to encourage authentic discipleship, where small churches birth more small churches as believers grow and mature, attracting new members. Vanderstelt says the main challenge with this approach is that it requires a shift in leadership perspective.”
The vision of our church, Highland Christian Fellowship, is also to establish new, reproducing church fellowships. And I agree that the approach described above "requires a shift in leadership perspective." They were talking about pastors moving away from functioning as "managers or directors of programs." While this must be done, I believe a more drastic paradigm shift must occur. The above model will work better (if at all) if we are willing to have local, native, non-ministry-as-career teams of pastors who shepherd small, reproducing churches.