RSS Feeds and More

I had a great week at America’s Keswick, where my topic was The Nature and Nurture of Spiritual Strength. Bill Welte and his team are doing an awesome job of creating an environment that is multi-generational, and my two word description for their ministry is passionate spirituality. The combination of the way Bill and Robert Hayes and family lead worship combined with the men who attend the meetings from the Colony of Mercy create a wonderful environment where God is working through the power of the gospel. I urge you to visit www.americaskeswick.org to learn more.

Here is a list of recent RSS Feeds that I found helpful. Hopefully you will also.

Developing New Churches

Bob Thune added a great post on The Resurgence titled “Church Planters: Stop Wasting God’s Money.” His point is that you can plant a missional church on next to nothing. If you are considering starting a church plant, this is a great read on how to tabulate the start up costs. You can read Bob’s post at:

http://theresurgence.com/church-planters-stop-wasting-Gods-money

Cultivating Church Leaders

Leaders impact the people around them, either in a positive or negative way. Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, Inc., posted some thoughts on how leaders impact their teams. He observed that there are five basic ways to energize your team. Read his post here:

http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/08/five-ways-to-energize-your-team.html

Building Healthy Churches

Healthy churches are nurtured with a missional mindset. The question is how to create that mindset as well as a sense of community. Hugh Halter and Matt Smay have developed The Tangible Kingdom Primer (TK Primer) to do just that. You can read about this resource on the Leadnet blog.

http://books.leadnet.org/2009/08/incarnational-community-in-8-weeks.html

Assisting Pastors and Churches in Crisis

Peacemaker Ministries has created The Peacemaking Church Resource Set as a way to nurture a culture of peace within churches. The set includes a pastor’s box to inspire peacemaking principles through sermon ideas, etc. It also contains small group resources to teach these principles. Finally, there are resources to embed Peacemaking Teams within churches. I urge every pastor to secure this set which, if implemented, will go a long way to nurture a healthy environment to handle conflict. Learn about this resource here:

http://www.peacemaker.net/site/c.aqKFLTOBIpH/b.2837365/k.65C1/The_Peacemaking_Church.htm

Hope you are having a great week.

~ Jim