When casting around for ideas for a new mission undertaking, the first place to start is prayer. As Psalm 127: 1 reminds us, “unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.” The purpose of prayer is not to ask God’s blessing on something that we have decided to do. Rather it is to seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance, to ask the Holy Spirit to draw our attention to what God wants us to do, to an unreached, unengaged people group that God wants us to reach and engage, a need that God wants us to meet. This may prove challenging since we may have all kinds of ideas about new mission activities which we may like or prefer to do or to begin doing, activities that are worthwhile but are nonetheless not what God wants us to undertake. The time may not be right. We may not be the right people. God has other things that he wants us to do or begin doing. As the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we c...

  One thing that I have noticed is that too many churches are scattershot in their approach to forming disciples of Jesus. They go about forming disciples in a disorganized way, rather than taking a focused approach. This was true in the evangelical churches in which I was involved as well as the mainline churches. Only one of these churches took an organized approach to its discipleship process but even its approach was not as organized as it might have been. The early Methodists were known for being methodical in what they did. Hence they were derisively labeled “Methodists” due to their methodical approach to spiritual formation. But I do not believe that we can say that today. Most churches follow a pattern that Methodists churches have followed since the nineteenth century—a service of public worship, preceded or followed by Sunday school. This, however, is a scattershot approach since the Sunday school teacher and sometimes the class itself determines what it studies. More at...

On Facebook I occasionally run across articles on self-seeding plants recommended for a cottage garden, meadow, or landscape area which a homeowner does not plan to mow. Self-seeding plants are so called because, if you plant one of them, they multiply year after year. Church members and those who regularly attend a church but have not yet joined it should be equipped so that they can be self-seeding, that is self-propagating, sharing the gospel with others, pointing them to Jesus, and if and when they come to faith in Jesus, discipling them so that they become disciples who can reproduce themselves. Sharing the gospel with those who are not yet believers and discipling new believers is not just the responsibility of pastors, lay preachers, and other ordained or licensed ministers. It is the responsibility of all who consider themselves followers of Jesus. We cannot say that it is not in our job description because it is. When Jesus entrusted the continuation of his mission to the apos...

While North America has some native dandelion species, the dandelions that we see dotting lawns, pastures, roadsides, orchards, and almost every other place this time of year are escapees from the herb gardens of the early colonists who brought them from the Old World. The early colonists had many uses for the dandelion—medicinal, culinary, and as a source of two natural dyes. It is only in the last century that the dandelion became the bane of homeowners who want what is in their eyes an unblemished green lawn. I loved dandelions as a boy, and I love them still. I love their bright yellow flowers and their downy clocks. On a breezy day dandelion seeds at the end of their gossamer-thin white threads can travel quite a distance. A few dandelion plants with their airborne seeds can populate a whole neighborhood. This is why I believe that they are perfect choice to illustrate how followers of Jesus should be reproducing themselves. They should be spreading like dandelions spread—everywhe...