Category Archives: LifeSpring Church

LifeSpring Church, Missional

It’s Official

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About three weeks ago I resigned my post as moderator of Ordinary Attempts. I found out that if you want to have a top notch blog with a large readership and lots of commenting, you have to invest huge amounts of time developing that–time I didn’t have.

So I told the good folks at Off the Map that I was going to have to turn over the reins. December 22 was my last day as moderator of that site, and I must say that I feel unburdened in my new status of former moderator.

One of the benefits of the resignation is that I now have some time to give to this blog. Not that I’m going to pour lots of time here, but I will be able to make more regular contributions about what is happening at LifeSpring and Merced.

Unlike the last several months, you can now expect to see semi-regular postings here. I look forward to sharing our happenings with you.

LifeSpring Church

Nevada Church

I’ve had a hunch about evangelism for several years. My hunch was that what normally masquerades as evangelism is really something quite stilted and odd. I tried some of it, and I was never satisfied with the results.

And then I met Jim Henderson. Jim put into words things I had only felt before–things I had dismissed as being peculiar or maybe my own reticence or cowardice. His definition of Ordinary Attempts is excellent.

That spark was fanned into a flame by Randy Stiever of Sparks, Nevada. Randy has been sending me OA stories, which I have been uploading to the Ordinary Attempts site.

I hope you’ll go lurk around at Ordinary Attempts. Overhear what people are saying about a commonsense way to show others what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus. ….without scaring them off with odd, ineffective methods.

Church planting, LifeSpring Church, Missional

Ordinary Attempts

Last week I got an invitation to moderate the Ordinary Attempts blog at Off-the-Map.org. After I got the guidelines, I decided to think about it for a few days. This morning I accepted.

I really like the Off the Map folks. They are keenly evangelistic, but not in the usual way. Jim Henderson, the father of OtM, tells people that he’s trying to teach evangelicals to not be weird. I think that is a good description.

By weird he means the outrageous things that we sometimes do in the name of evangelism–things that totally turn off the unchurched. Ordinary Attempts are the commonsense, respectful, and caring acts done for another person, just because.

The interesting thing is that we now live in a time that is perfectly suited for OA’s. The knock-on-your-door, programmatic approach to evangelism simply doesn’t work for most folks.

OA’s require patience, but they produce relationships that are deep, genuine, and potentially the context for future discussions about Jesus.

If you want to read over my shoulder go to Ordinary Attempts and watch the conversation that goes on there.