The big day is coming quickly. It’s almost Easter Sunday and all over the world pastors are working hard to show up on this Super Bowl of Sunday preaching with their best. As we now fully emerge on the backside of the Covid epidemic with impressions of revival in our midst, it’s no secret that many of us are coming into this fresh season of ministry with all the expectations that Easter brings with it. And it’s why I think it is incredibly important for all of us to hear the gospel again with fresh ears. Is it possible that too many of us are functioning with a truncated version of the gospel ..read more

Host: Jeff Reed Guests: Stuart McPherson, VRTiger, and John Hazel AltspaceVR is dead. Well, not quite yet, but as of March 10, 2023, Microsoft will be sunsetting their social VR platform AltspaceVR. Of all social VR platforms, AltVR had the most churches. Where are these churches going? And how is Microsoft closing actually a good thing for the Church in the social VR space? We’re talking to three virtual reality pastors who are homeless now thanks to Microsoft! Where are they going? What’s next? Jump on this Leadership Network podcast and let’s find out ..read more

Following the pandemic and painful discord in the American Church in its wake, I had been thinking—and telling friends privately—“I hope the whole thing burns to the ground.” YEESH. Sounds terrible, I know. But that was the energy I felt, confident that whatever amidst us is real and enduring would absolutely persist and could emerge even stronger. But I really did want to see everything else—anything not real, anything not aligned to the Lordship and way of Jesus—Burn. To. The. Ground. That was the phrase I used. I’m not saying this was a holy desire, or a good desire, There may have been not ..read more

The digital age has revolutionized the way we communicate church, but in many ways it has yet to influence how we “be” the church. As a result of COVID, hundreds of thousands of churches learned how to stream church services online to stay in touch with the people who were locked out of the building. Now that buildings are open again and people have come back, it’s time for your church to rediscover its digital Why. Why should your church do digital? Truth is, the strength of digital has nothing to do with your weekend service or sermon. It’s time to mature our view of digital, and how it can ..read more

I distinctly remember the conversations that permanently reshaped my faith and leadership in the fall of 2021. The first happened in one of my church’s pastoral staff meetings. My lead pastors instructed all of us to make a four-day, silent prayer retreat in the northern woods of Wisconsin a top priority. My heart sank faster than the Titanic. As a naturally loud, extroverted, city-oriented person, this trip seemed like the closest thing to hell on earth for me. Immediately, I began to justify in my mind why this could not happen. I have two young boys and [at the time] a third one on the way ..read more

When Your (Virtual) Church Home Is Taken Away… The virtual reality social space scene just got quieter: Microsoft, owner of the popular virtual world platform AltspaceVR, decided to shut it down. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, though, because Microsoft is primarily a work productivity company and not one that specializes in virtual social spaces. Unfortunately, most churches operating in virtual reality were operating in Altspace… so there will be a lot of churches without (virtual) church buildings when Microsoft officially sunsets the software on March 10, 2023. It’s worth noting, ho ..read more

Over the last century, the face of Christianity has radically changed. The past five hundred years of church history has often focused on European churches and their descendants. Yet as historian Philip Jenkins has noted, the last one hundred years has seen a new shift in the center of gravity for the Christian movement southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America.1 The 21st century gave rise to over 420,000 missionaries, only 12-15 percent of which were from the West.2 To better understand this phenomenon, consider the following statistics. In 1910, about two-thirds of the world’s Christians ..read more

Where Does the Microchurch Movement in the West Find Itself? In 2022, Leadership Network (LN) convened a Learning Community of leading microchurch practitioners and network leaders. The goal of this community was to catalyze and collate the biblical, missiological, and cultural learnings of the microchurch movement in America in order to help current and future microchurch leaders in the West. The LN Microchurch Next team worked with Catapult to help design and facilitate these events, as well as harvest, synthesize, and disseminate the findings. The Mircochurch Learning Community, with repres ..read more

The Church in America is in crisis. At least that is what we have been told. Every day it feels like there is another article or another statistic that corroborates some form of data that highlights the Church’s decline. And if we are not careful, as pastors and leaders, this can trigger our anxiety and anger in the midst of our exhaustion. We can begin to cave under the pressure of feeling as if we are rolling a boulder up a mountain—unsure that we will ever make it to the top without the boulder rolling back over us or even worse that getting the boulder to the top of the mountain might not ..read more

Equip and Encourage Army disciple makers virtually to make disciples wherever they are sent locally.  Disciple makers in the E-2 Network, regardless of physical location, will always have connection to an intentional community living to advance the Kingdom of Jesus in the Army context. The E-2 Network exists to Encourage and Equip Disciple makers for the unique challenges of Kingdom Ministry in the Army. A monthly zoom huddle—for training and encouragement—connects like-minded believers with a heart for ministry to soldiers and their families. Listen to Episode 25 of the podcast and acces ..read more