Lately, I’ve heard and read several conversations wondering about the megachurch. Some question its authenticity, others question its methodology, while some just question whether big is good. As these questions bounce around in my head, I’m serving on staff at the largest United Methodist congregation in Oklahoma City. Needless to say, I’ve got a … Continue reading »
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Who is Your Tribe?
Michael Hyatt’s excellent blog has a guest post by Mary DeMuth that explores how she discovered her tribe (a la Seth Godin‘s, Tribes). This post got me thinking about the ways we find our tribe. How do we figure out the group where we have the most potential for impact and influence? DeMuth has a … Continue reading »
Open Call for God-Called Preachers
My two oldest kids stayed overnight with my mother back in southeastern Oklahoma, so I drove down and picked them up in Henryetta today. On the way back to Oklahoma City, I decided to take a different route. We ventured through downtown and made a stop by an older United Methodist Church off the beaten … Continue reading »
Mission Trumps Tradition
In case you don’t know, I really like Dan Kimball. Why? Because I think he does his very best to connect with the people in his community who don’t know Jesus Christ. I think he carries a sense of urgency about sharing the gospel that we need to reclaim across the Church. I also think he … Continue reading »
Core Values & Mission
While the United Methodist Church has agreed on its mission, “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” we have yet to have a common agreement on what this means! Words like “disciple” and “transformation” are fairly nebulous and vague when you don’t have a common culture throughout your organization. Maybe … Continue reading »
Servant Walk Curriculum
Several folks have been asking me about the Servant Walk curriculum, so I thought I’d post one of the handouts we use each Sunday. This link (OK, I’m working to fix this) should take you to a Google Doc version of the PDF that I send to each of our teacher/facilitators. OK, so Google Docs … Continue reading »
Top Ten Differences – Small Town to Megachurch
Sometimes people ask me, “So Matt, what’s it like serving in a Church that is 5.85 times bigger than the town you grew up in?” OK, maybe no one else actually took the time to divide the membership of the church where I serve (7086) by the population of my hometown (1211 in the year … Continue reading »
Organic Community
Yesterday, I bought Joseph R. Myers‘ book, Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect. In the first chapter, “Synchronized Life: Moving from Master Plan to Organic Order,” Myers discusses the differences between programattic models of prescribing community and organic ways of developing environments in which community emerges. In describing the point of community, … Continue reading »
Shifting Values, Structural Monuments?
Jim Collins of Built to Last and Good to Great fame has an interesting chapter in Leading Beyond the Walls: How High-Performing Organizations Collaborate for Shared Success. In “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down,” he talks about organizations of the future, [in the future] the defining boundary will be a permeable membrane defined by values, … Continue reading »
