With the announcement that Mark and Sherrylee Woodward are stepping down from the executive director role at Let's Start Talking, I wanted to republish this article I wrote a few years back about how LST was a pioneering, missional ministry before we even had missional language. I also wanted to say thank you to Mark and Sherrylee for their tireless work in this…

Excited to have Hector and Meliss Hinojosa, along with their sons Joshua and Caleb, here for two weeks at the Fairfax Church of Christ on a FriendSpeak mission trip. Hector is on the missions committee at The Hills in Fort Worth, Texas. They wanted to go on a personal, family mission trip through FriendSpeak/ Let's Start Talking--and chose to come here to the Washington, D.C. area! FriendSpeak/Let's Start Talking is an outreach ministry that helps…

Thanksgiving is a great time of food, family, and fun (the fun in our family includes watching the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving game!). But did you know that Thanksgiving is also a great time and opportunity to reach out.



Here are seven simple but powerful ways to reach out this Thanksgiving and have a "missional" Thanksgiving. (A thank you to…

Tonight was a fantastic night of service for those going to the Dominican Republic family trip this December. My girls, Gina and Emily, were able to serve alongside other families in checking the Magi boxes, making sure that they were ready for shipment.

But what really made the night was that the person who leads this…

Today we were blessed to have a study with a woman named Jacinta. She starting worshiping with us about three weeks ago, after being directed towards us by one of our church leaders who works for a local non-profit.

Jacinta checked on her connection card (member/guest card) that she was interested in a seeker Bible study. We have this listed as a prominent type of response that people can check on their card, which helps in setting up these studies. So we got…

Does prayer make a difference in reaching out to others for Christ--including starting seeker Bible studies? Does having a specific time and date and plan for a seeker study matter? Is there power in making a specific ask of people?

The answer to these questions is YES!

1. A Plan

Recently,…

Wow. So each week, I and others in our seekers group commit to trying to bless three people each week (for both Christians and…

I love sharing the gospel with people. And I love seeing people start following Jesus and be baptized into his name.

This past Sunday, Vololona (2nd from the left in picture above) and her nephew, Earnest (2nd from the right in picture above), were baptized into Christ! They are originally from Madagascar, and we came to know them through our…

Some of you know that I encourage our seeker groups as they are going through the Story of Redemption (www.StoryofRedemption.com - an evangelistic Bible study for postmodern culture) to start living out the life of Jesus. Introduced in part 5 of the series, we use a set of missional lifestyles or practices called…

Last night was an awesome night with our seeker Bible study (part 8 in the www.StoryofRedemption). Two more made the decision to be baptized in a few weeks! And what is more, our group came back this week sharing their "BELLS"--churched and unchurched people they sought to BLESS, EAT together with, LEARN from…

Today the movie "Noah" is coming out to the big screen. And I want to share why Christians and churches should view this as a great opportunity to talk about their faith--and why it is foolish to waste time and energy attacking the film.

1. In our secular world, getting people thinking about God is a good thing. The problem with much of our culture today--and…

As I detailed in a recent post, our church has adopted a local elementary school. While the children in schools are often adopted, the teachers often are left out. So our church decided to help the teachers--who are underpaid and understaffed--in many ways, including providing them school supplies.

After the church delivered a ton of…

One of the primary challenges that the church and Christians have in the US is bad PR. Amongst non-Christians and non-church going folk, churches and Christians are unfortunately often portrayed and viewed as intolerant, bigoted, and self-serving.

Some of the primary challenges of public schools and school administrators are:…

This Sunday we are having an old style "Friends Day," where we are encouraging members to invite their friends to our worship service. It simply gives members an excuse to invite their friends. It will be good to see what kind of response we get from this.

Some questions arise, such as, Are people motivated to invite yet?…

 In the above video, which we showed this Sunday, Kelly Weatherford talks about how she had prayed for her husband, Charlie, to become a Christian for 13 years. They went through the Story of Redemption, and at the end of the study, he was baptized! Now, everything has changed. Charlie has become the spiritual leader in their home, they are…

Here is the second in a series of blog posts on why Churches of Christ are shrinking. The first post,"A Left-Brained Fellowship in a Right-Brained World," has gone viral. While not everyone agrees with everything in the post, from the new members that joined the network, it would appear that a high percentage of these new…

Tony Jones stirred up quite a hornet's nest among the home school community by criticizing Christians who home school as failing to be "salt and light" to the community by withdrawing from the public schools. Jones declares them to not be missional.

This controversy has been picked up by local newspapers such as the St. Louis Dispatch in their article, …

Recently I shared how we began a new seeker small group study (Story of Redemption) at the workplace of one of our members, Alfonso DeLuna. Alfonso owns a mechanic shop, and he has reached out to a number of people…

 Sam Trevino was baptized on September 25, 2011. There have been so many baptisms lately that it has been hard to write up all of their stories, so sorry for the delay. However, this story continues to develop.

Sam has been friends with Alfonso DeLuna, a current High Pointe member, for years. When they knew each other years ago,…

I have reposted the following article. Here is the original link. It is great to