I’ve been blogging for three years now. Most blogs get a few dozen views. The good ones get over a hundred. A select few make it past a thousand. And then one Monday morning back in March I wrote 10 Things the Church Puts Ahead of Reaching People. I’ll be completely honest. It was a filler post. I literally copied and pasted the list from my sermon notes I had preached from the day before. I had no idea it was going... Read more
Yesterday this blog post just passed 250,000 page views, making it the most viewed blog post on my site by far (by roughly around 243,000 page views!) In honor of that milestone (and because I wanted a day off), here’s the post once again. Originally posted March 23, 2015. You would think the Great Commission is clear enough: Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Unfortunately, too many churches put other things ahead of reaching people.... Read more
Last week while talking through the importance of Acts 1 in the early church (when they got their leadership structure right), I used a visual illustration to help explain why some churches experience Acts 2 growth and many don’t. Watch the video below: https://vimeo.com/130325668 Read more
Never been on a mission trip before? This time of year mission trips abound to places all over the world. Here are 7 great reasons for you to go: 1. You’ll experience a bigger world. It’s easy to fall into the illusion that the world is nothing more than strip malls and the latest reality tv show. A mission trip lets you experience a much bigger world than you could ever imagine. 2. You’ll see how the other half... Read more
There are simply no words to describe how “other” the world is that I encountered recently. I was on a mission trip to a Haitian slum in the Dominican Republic. We stayed a few miles outside the slum, so every morning we rode into the community where our church in America has helped plant a church, school, and medical clinic. Words are insufficient to capture a sense of life in that slum. No paved roads. Little to no electricity. No... Read more
Here’s the first sermon in our summer series BIG Church: https://vimeo.com/129965691 Read more
The picture you see is two of our church members on a recent trip to a Haitian slum in the Dominican Republic. The kids they’re holding are poor. They don’t have any of the things we look forward to this time of year: summer camps, trips to the beach, vacations to Disney World. They don’t even have many of the things we take for granted every day: televisions, deep freezers, electricity, running water, a stocked refrigerator. By all accounts they... Read more
Rather than tell you how things should be, today I’ll simply pass along how things are. Recently I contacted several guests that have gotten plugged into our church over the past few months. One of the questions I asked them was “what made you come back to Mt Vernon?” Based on their responses, I’ve pulled out three things that a church can work on to make help keep and plug in guests that come to your church. 1. Children’s Ministry... Read more
Last Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at the church (Iglesia no Denominacional Justificados en la Cruz) we help sponsor in the Haitian slums (Batey Central) of Barahona, Dominican Republic. It’s a young church, planted a few years ago by Wilkyns Chal, a godly Dominican that lives in the Batey. His church is young, made up primarily of kids and teenagers associated with the school that accompanies the church there. It’s quite a contrast from what you’d normally associate... Read more
Recently on a Delta flight on my way out of the country I did something that I’ve never done before. Never. I’ve flown for years, different airlines, different destinations, different countries. But in all of my flights, I’ve never done this before: watch the in-flight safety video all the way through from start to finish. If you’re a frequent traveler, once the safety information pops up you immediately start to zone out. Listen to the flight attendants, pull down... Read more
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