Secret followers

I was reading a familiar story this morning - the story of the burial of Jesus from John 19. I've probably read it dozens of times in my life, and yet today I saw something I've never seen before. Check it out:Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.Did you catch that? Look at it again - a secret follower of Jesus who was accompanied by another man who had been so afraid to be seen with Jesus that he went to Him at night - these are the men who end up with the body of Jesus, preparing it for burial. All day long I've been thinking about this. I wonder about...

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Jon and Jenny

Last week Kim and I said goodbye to some dear friends who came to mean so much to us in the short two years that we knew them. Jon and Jenny James (in the picture above, with Andrew in the middle, for reasons only Andrew could probably explain) were part of the launch team of Story Church. (In case you don't know what that is, it's basically the handful of people who commit themselves to helping to get a brand new church off the ground.) We had been meeting in my house with about three other families on a weekly basis when Jon emailed me one day out of the blue. He and his family were looking for a church and he said that they would like to come...

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Dear Church Planter

Church planter, I want to talk to you today about numbers. Every church planter faces the temptation to measure the success of their church by numbers. The number of butts in seats, and the number of dollars given in offering. Those two numbers - butts and bucks, become the dominant numbers above all else. And let's be honest, they are pretty important stats. Without people, you don't have a church. And without finances, you can't continue to have a church. At some level these are important numbers. But while these numbers tell a story, they don't tell the WHOLE story.Two weeks ago we had some of our highest numbers ever. It was close to our highest attendance, and it was by far our highest offering ever. And on Monday, I was feeling pretty good. We had turned a corner, we were on our way...

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