For many Americans, especially in the south, Sunday morning is about dressing nice, piling into the minivan and attending a worship service. The hope is that it’s a positive family experience, with age appropriate programming that is safe, fun and at least a little Biblically inspiring. As my sister told me before a Christmas Eve service one year, “You better make me cry.” She meant, “Inspire me.” Not sure if I did. A lot of good things can happen when people “go to church.” When the Bible is clearly taught and people pay attention with open hearts they can have deep and powerful encounters w ..read more

What is the church? What is a disciple? How effective are our current methods for making disciples? Is the way we do church working? In this episode of the Collaboration podcast we interview Damian Gerke, who literally wrote a book on the paradigm shift the western church needs to make: In the Way – Church as we know it can be a discipleship movement again. Damian shares his story of serving on staff at a large church and wondering if the methods they were using were actually working. Was it possible to see more individual transformation, more personal engagement with Jesus, more training of t ..read more

First of all we want to be clear that planting new churches and starting new kingdom ministries is not our last priority! Ideally church planting should be the result of vibrant prayer, healthy leaders, disciplemaking strategies and city service. But of our five TB4C priorities, this one is definitely the most aspirational. There are a lot of new churches in Tampa Bay, but not because of any coordinated strategy – simply because we have a vibrant and growing metro area that attracts church planters. Today the Collaboration Podcast welcomes Pastor Darryl Williamson of Living Faith Bible Fellow ..read more

In this episode of the Collaboration Podcast, special guest Brian Sanders, founder of the Tampa Underground, shares principles and vision for collaboration as an invitation for pastors to the upcoming January 9 Round Table. Guest Dan Claassen shares about foster care as a specific example of the potential for collaboration - identifying many "lanes" for individual Christians and churches to engage with the orphans in our city. In short, we all need to shift our thinking from organizational ("how will this benefit my church's bottom line?") to movemental ("what would it look like if we worked ..read more

Mike Kahn of the Tampa Bay Baptist Association joins Darin, Lucas and Austin to talk about the key priority of discipleship. What is a disciple? How do you know when you have made one? What are the key habits and skills of a disciple and a disciple-maker? Our conversation reveals that there are a number of conversions that many long time Christians and leaders need to walk through in order to effectively equip the saints to make disciples who make disciples. Listen Now Training Resources ..read more

As we walk through the five priorities of TB4C, we started last time with worship and prayer as the first and foundational task for our city network. This episode we focus on the health and unity of pastors and leaders in the city. David Oates, Len Harper and David Speicher share their experiences over the last two plus decades in the Brandon / Apollo Beach areas bringing pastors together. We can chart the progression of thinking like this: Unhealthy leaders can’t lead healthy churches Healthy leaders can lead healthy churches (but that doesn’t mean they will) Leaders need each other for ..read more