Peter -n- Melodye

All my life I have heard that a healthy family spends quality time together. And, most importantly, they eat their evening meal together. They don't get tempted into letting busy-ness and many activities eat into this mealtime together. (Pun fully intended. Hope you got it.) Now I am living and ministering in a culture where most quality relational time occurs most naturally during the evening hours. If I want to go out evangelizing 2x2 the best time is the evening If I want to be involved in a small group at church the best time is the evening If we want to minister to our co-workers the least busy time is the evening A couple months ago I made the jump and started a regularly scheduled evening time of evangelism twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Melodye has always had her women's Bible study on Wednesday evenings. Now she is looking at the possibility of participating in a ministry of our church which will probably occur on Friday evenings. Suddenly from being toge...

Years ago I had a cupboard built over/around our washer. It is more than 3 feet deep and is nearly as high as the ceiling, so we use the top shelf in the back as long-term storage for stuff we don't often need to access. Recently the moths have attacked again. About once a year we get an infestation of moths that perform miracles far greater than Houdini ever did -- they can infiltrate even air-tight tupperware containers and sometimes even new products still sealed in plastic. Tonight my wife decided it was time to root out the problem and decided to start on that top shelf to see if she could find any moth larvae. Rather than go look for a ladder she hit on the creative idea to make use of our youngest son (aka "the monkey") to help him climb up on the top shelf and get the stuff at the back, handing it down to her on the ground. Since it was going to be a long climb she lifted him by his belt loops (commonly known as a wedgee -- of "Wedgee Tales" fame --...

I'm more of a discipleship kind of person rather than an evangelist... I agree that some people find it easier to evangelize than others. Some people are not nearly as intimidated by changing the subject to a spiritual topic, maybe even by "cold call" evangelism. Whether that "not nearly as intimidated" relates to a spiritual gifting or to training or to personality or simply to faith is a question I will leave to Greek scholars and sociologists... But I will submit that the Bible is pretty clear as to which believers are expected to carry out the Great Commission -- it's a command given to all believers. And, whether I like it or not, even little old "but-I-don't-have-the-gift-of-evangelism" me is included in "all believers." So it comes down to faith and obedience ... or lack of faith and disobedience. But that doesn't mean that I need to start knocking on doors and preaching on street corners tomorrow. In fact, there's a...

I've been doing a lot of thinking about multiplication in churches. What are the keys, what's the "silver bullet" to get a church growing by multiplication rather than addition. I realized I'm getting way too complicated. There's no huge, complicated strategy. It's simple. Churches where just a few people are involved in evangelism will grow by addition. The rate of addition will be in direct relation to how many people are evangelizing and how often/effectively they do it. Churches where everyone is involved in evangelism will grow by multiplication. A little-known statistic: Most churches would be thrilled with an annual growth rate of 10% (at that rate a church would double in size about every 7 years). In order to achieve a growth rate of 10% every person in the church needs to evangelize and bring into the church 1 person every 10 years. Not "1 person every week," not even "1 person every year", but rather "1 person ever...

I had a really neat conversation with my brother today. You know how usually conversations stay in "lite mode", talking about kids and activities and stuff. (And I don't have any problem with that -- relationships are largely built on shared experiences and it is these experiences that gradually build up a firm foundation of mutual care and ultimately relationship.) Well, today my brother broke through in our conversation. He had very interestedly inquired into my work for several minutes, asking details and stuff. Then he asked (somewhat hesitantly - which told me this wasn't a "glossy" question but heart-felt) "If so much of your church planting work is completely dependent on the Holy Spirit then what very specific requests can you give us so we can be praying?" Then he went on to ask for names of people I'm coaching or discipling, names of people I'm evangelizing, what big-picture things need to be kept in mind, etc. Then he asked...

When you rent a house sometimes it's hard to know where to record the height of your boys as they grow. My parents always had a door that they marked our height on. But in the absence of a permanent door, a blog will suffice. On September 1, 2010... Christopher is 4'10.5" Joshua is 4'6" Jonathan is 4' even

Tonight is Tuesday night. That's one of the 2 evenings each week when I go up to my team-mate Dave's house and we walk through his neighborhood, praying as we walk and searching for opportunities to share the Gospel. Tonight as I was riding my bike and almost to Dave's house I passed a guy I met last week. He had made a profession of faith months before but then seemed to lose interest. Last week he seemed more interested and it seems like God orchestrated several events for us to meet together tonight. This young man is bored and restless and unemployed. Are his motives to meet with us in hopes of some financial gain or is he really re-interested? Only God knows, but we were happy to go and drink a coffee. He took us to a coffee bar that he recommended. And then he did something that is very rare in Albania -- he deliberately took us back in among some trees at the back of the property so we could sit alone in peace and quiet. It was a delightful setting for an equ...