David Dunbar and Houston We Have a Problem.
Ed Stetzer provides a link to the fifty page church planting research project conducted by he and Warren Bird, titled “THE STATE OF CHURCH PLANTING IN THE UNITED STATES: RESEARCH OVERVIEW AND QUALITATIVE STUDY OF PRIMARY CHURCH PLANTING ENTITIES.”
In summarizing some of the findings Stetzer shares the four following current realities:
We’re Starting More Churches Than Ever
We Are Cooperating More Broadly
We Are Less Denominationally Governed and More Networked
We Are Learning to Be More Evangelistically Effective
MLK and The Missional Church by Troy Jackson
King, I believe, would call the missional church movement to adopt a new scoreboard for measuring success. The church should continue to count conversions, worship attendance, membership and weekly offerings. However, the truly missional church would also keep track of key indicators that reflect the health and well-being of its immediate community: literacy rate, high school graduation rate, number of teenage pregnancies, number of uninsured, unemployment rate, poverty rate, rate of homelessness and murder rate.
Tim Keller and The Gospel and the Poor.
In short . . . the gospel requires us to be involved in the life of the poor–not only financially, but personally and emotionally. Our giving must not be token but so radical that it brings a measure of suffering into our own lives. And we should be very patiently and nonpaternalistically open-handed to those whose behavior has caused or aggravated their poverty. These attitudes and dimensions of ministry to the poor proceed not simply from general biblical ethical principles but from the gospel itself.