Being the Church Online

Westpoint Fellowship Church is utilizing discussion boards to engage people in spiritual conversation.  People from all over the world are responding including some who have tried to hijack the boards.   There are some interesting threads taking place right now.

No one lights a lamp and then covers it with a washtub or shoves it under the bed. No, you set it up on a lamp stand so those who enter the room can see their way. (Luke 8:16 The Message)

Christmas at Seaworld

Last night, I took my family to Sea World here in Orlando.  We enjoyed the Shamu Christmas show.  Yes, I said Christmas.  Included in the program were the songs “Away in a Manger” and “Oh Holy Night”.  It was a beautiful and inspiring presentation. I am glad to see that Anheuser-Busch is not afraid to say” Merry Christmas”.

Business Gets Evangelsim

Check out this excerpt from US News and World Report:

"Evangelism is about selling your dream so that other people believe in it as much as you do," says Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple Computer and one of the key people responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. "Those people then, in turn, get even more people to believe. Just like Jesus was an evangelist who recruited 12 more evangelists." With corporate evangelism, the goal is to find and identify those customers who are already crazy about your product or service--who are actively talking it up in blogs or Web forums, for instance--and turning them with loads of personal attention into "customer evangelists" who then spread the word to others, who then--well, you get the idea.

Business has learned the value of word of mouth evangelism while church planters try to discover the latest advertising gimmick. What’s wrong with this picture?

Planting Revolutionary Churches

Revolutionary Christians don’t want to go to “church,” they want to be the Church, the body of Christ, in every day life.  New research by George Barna shows that if current trends continue, one-third of Americans will express their faith through alternative forms of church by the year 2025.  These new expressions of church are meeting in apartment, condo, and manufactured home communities; they meet in houses, in restaurants and coffee houses, in work places and on the internet. Many Christian leaders have identified this radical shift as a new Great Awakening that is sweeping the planet.  Church leaders have a choice to ignore the movement, stand against it, or embrace it.

You are invited to attend a Free half-day conference in the Orlando area on Saturday, February 11, 2006.  This event is made possible through generous contributions Greater Orlando Baptist Association, Cooperative Program gifts to the Florida Baptist and Southern Baptist Conventions.

For more information, contact Mark Weible at 407-293-0450, mweible@goba.org or register online at www.goba.org/cpn.

Orlando could soon be known more for Jesus than Mickey!

There is an interesting statement in Acts 19:10 that often goes unnoticed: This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. Did I read that right?  Did everyone in Asia Minor hear the gospel? How did it happen?  Can it happen in Central Florida?

When we read the rest of the chapter, we discover that Paul was in Ephesus, teaching at the school of Tyrannus.  It is not likely that everyone in Asia Minor had the opportunity to go to Ephesus to hear the gospel directly from the mouth of Paul.  They heard it in their own communities from people connected with local churches that were planted by the church at Ephesus and her daughter churches.

A church planting movement was sparked in Ephesus, a key metropolitan for reaching the entire region.  Paul and his team discipled missionary church planters in Ephesus and sent them out all over Asia Minor.  The result was that everyone in the province had an opportunity to hear the gospel.   What about Central Florida?  Could everyone here have that same opportunity? Absolutely!

Our theme for 2006 is “Acts 1:8, Who will it take?”  It will take Visionary Leaders who will pour themselves into empowering others to take the gospel to unreached people groups right here in Central Florida. It will take Engaged Churches that birth new churches in new and transitional communities.  It will take Transformed People who continually give themselves away so that others can come to know Christ.

It is possible that we will one day be able to say that all of Central Florida, both Christians and non-Christians heard the word of the Lord.  That means that Orlando could soon be known more for Jesus than Mickey.  In order for that to happen, there must be enough churches in every community to makes disciples of those who accept the message of the gospel.  That is why we are passionate about  planting churches.

Do you Wiki?

The information reformation is making new strides with the rising popularity of wikis.

The term wiki generally refers to a collaborative effort to assimilate information on the internet. The best known wiki is wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia written and edited by its readers. Anyone can create and edit wiki entries. A relative newcomer to the waki wiki world is wikihow.com., a collaborative online how-to guide for anything from stopping a dripping faucet to becoming a Christian.

Wikis (along with blogs and podcasts) are just one aspect of what is being called Web 2.0. If the first generation of the internet was all about the dissemination of information, web 2.0 is about the collaboration of information. What Gutenberg’s printing press did for the modern period is nothing compared to how web 2.0 will shape postmodernity. (Checkout the ZDNet article on the impact of wikis).

A rapidly growing and powerful reformation is changing the way information is shared. It is conceivable that before this decade is out, information communities like wikis will replace traditional media as authoritative sources of information.

Web 2.0 will create great opportunities and challenges for Christ-followers. Some will feel threatened by the relativization of information. Others will realize the potential of communities of faith sharing the Truth with the world in the open marketplace of ideas.

Join me at
churchplanting.wikispaces.com
as we explore the waki wiki world together.