It has been three months since my last post. I am now in my third year of blogging, with this being by far the longest hiatus ever taken. Here is a brief update of the past few months, more details are planned to follow in future blog posts.
As many of you know, last summer my family and I moved to Birmingham, Alabama where I now serve as the pastor of church multiplication with The Church at Brook Hills. The past eight months have been wonderful and a great delight. Each day I grow in my love for these people and consider it a tremendous honor to be considered one of their pastors.
In this role, I oversee all of our church planting efforts in North America, work closely with our Global Disciplemaking Team to help equip all of our missionaries in church planting, and oversee our leadership training for our small group leaders, pastors, and missionaries. While there was some structure in place prior to my arrival, much of what we are doing in these areas involves a massive re-engineering and even developing much from scratch. I have been on a steep learning curve, getting to know and work with the other pastoral team members, spending much time in prayer, launching some new training modules, and preparing to release a new weekly on-line video session, Multiplication Matters. I am crazy busy, but loving every minute of it, and deeply thankful to be a part of what the Lord is doing through this faith family!
However, the transition has come with many challenges. Prior to leaving Louisville, I made many commitments that I could not simply drop as a result of a change in ministry. These commitments were made long before I knew the Lord was leading me to Birmingham. One of these involved helping some of my doctoral students finish their programs. Another one was related to my books.
I made the commitment to Thomas Nelson, Baker, and William Carey to publish three books with them in 2013–again, long before any conversations with Brook Hills. And by the Lord’s grace, they are finished and in the hands of the editors. Needless to say, new responsibilities and three writing deadlines do not go well together–not to mention the move into a house that needed some renovations (I’ll save this for a future post.).
Last year, I published three books and re-released two–this year another three publications.
I am greatly looking forward to taking a break from writing and only publishing one book per year from now on. 🙂
While I plan to share more in future posts, here is what is scheduled to be released this year.
Pressure Points: Twelve Global Issues Shaping the Face of the Church addresses what I believe to be twelve of the most significant global challenges influencing the Church and Her mission both today, and likely for the rest of our lives. This is to be released with Thomas Nelson in July. The table of contents as being advertised–and what i had in my original proposal–has been revised slightly per my request. I have come to believe that the Pornification of Societies is significant enough to be included among the twelve most critical issues. I plan to share more on this matter later.
Developing a Strategy for Missions is a book that my friend–and former professor–Mark Terry and I wrote for Baker Academic as the last book in their Encountering Mission series. We wanted to strike a balance between the scholastic demands of this excellent series with the practical nature of strategy development. I think we accomplished our goal and hope you enjoy it and use it. We are told that this book should be out in September.
Missionary Methods: Research, Reflections, and Realities (tentative title) is a work that my friend Craig Ott and I co-edited together. Craig is a professor at Trinity Evangelical and has written and edited other works and contributed to several books. Every year the Evangelical Missiological Society and William Carey Library partner together to publish a work containing some of the papers presented at that year’s national EMS meeting. Last year, our theme related to missionary methods in light of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?. When I started praying and looking for a co-editor for this work, Craig came to my attention as a friend, excellent missiologist, academic, church planter, and a fan of Roland Allen. This book is scheduled to be released at this year’s EMS meeting in September.
As you can imagine, it has been a wild and wonderful ride since last summer. In twenty years of vocational ministry, the last eight months have been the most challenging that I have known. However, the Lord is good and gracious, abounding in rich love, providing strength and capabilities to us in our times of need.
Now you know the reason for my three months of silence. It is nice to be back to the blog. . . . It is nice to be able to breathe again. 🙂
(Image source: Microsoft Office, Royalty-free Corbis)
Wow, I can’t believe you’ve pulled off all these commitments at once and in such a short time. It’s clear you relied on God’s grace and strength. I am sure I would’ve felt overwhelmed with all those commitments. It’s great that you can breathe long enough to blog. I will be looking forward to the Multiplication Matters series. My husband and I are church planters in the Midwest and could use all the wisdom and counsel we can get. Also, curious to learn what the Pornification of Societies means.
Thanks, Sarah, for your comment. Keep up the great work in the Midwest. I pray that the Lord will continue to use you and your husband to advance the gospel there and beyond!
The Pornification of Societies relates to the international reality of the effect of the global pornography business on both believers and unbelievers.