What if Starbucks wrote your mission statement
A couple weeks ago I was speaking to a group of missional city leaders in Oklahoma City and said that I wanted to read our vision for city transformation and began to read. Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – to bring about a thriving city – one person, one family and... Read More
“You’re doing a good job!”
When our oldest son Andy was six we were sitting in church and being the first Sunday of the month Pastor Bob gave an explanation of communion and asked everyone to “examine” him or herself before partaking of the elements. Liz leaned over to explain to Andy what all that meant. “This is a time... Read More
What people want in their city
What makes a community a desirable place to live? What makes people happy to live where they live? What attaches a person to his or her city? The Gallup organization and the Knight Foundation launched the Knight Soul of the Community[1] project in 2008 with these questions in mind. They interviewed nearly 43,000 people in... Read More
City transformation as a platform
Maybe you’ve heard the term “platform” thrown around lately. You politely nod your head and mutter, “yea…platform….that’s where it’s at.” But what exactly is a platform? Michael Hyatt says that a platform, at its simplest definition is “a place to stand to be seen or heard.” He goes on to say that the purpose of a platform is to... Read More
How tables builds community
Last Saturday Liz, and four friends from work went to TEDx MileHigh. Of course it was a great event but the thing that got the lion’s share of my attention was something called Public Coffee. Public Coffee defines itself as follows: “Public Coffee is a mobile coffee shop. It visits various neighborhoods throughout Denver to... Read More
What makes Boulder a great tech city
A few months ago I read Brad Feld’s The Startup Community: Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your city. As I read Feld I couldn’t help but make the connections to what an ecosystem for church startups would look like. Church planters are the entrepreneurs of the kingdom. On a Spirit-led whim, equipped only with vision and... Read More
To Transform a City in Word Cloud
Several years ago I attended a one-day seminar on the “Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte. Tufte’s work is based on the assumption that all quantitative information can be explained visually. To me his most powerful example is Charles Minard’s 1869 depiction of Napoleon’s march on Moscow. Those who know me, know that... Read More
The least missional thing people can do—know the names of our neighbors
Most every pastor wants to help people grow and multiply their missional effectiveness as much as they possibly can but what if we flipped the script and tried to help them the least amount possible in order to maximize their chances of living missionally? So what might we do? In Chip and Dan Heath’s best-seller,... Read More
The science and theology of generosity
A couple days ago two young couples came over to our house for some Bible study—nothing too profound. Each time we’ll be together we’ll read through the Proverb that corresponds to the day of the month (in this case Proverbs 3) followed by the study we’ve done on the parables of Jesus (in this case... Read More
Thinking about cities
As of May, 2007 more people live in cities than live in rural areas and that trend is never going back. God begins his work in a garden but his work ends in a city. More and more Christian leaders find themselves thinking about…and writing about cities and their place in the city. Some call... Read More