Pastoring a Sending Church: An Interview with Pat Hood

Pat Hood explains what it is like to pastor a "sending church." |Ed Stetzer

Pat Hood is the Senior Pastor at LifePoint Church located at various campuses throughout the Nashville area, and is the author of The Sending Church, which is due out in October.The Sending Church is made up of examples from his own congregation, showing how a church isn't really a church until it leaves the building and expands God's Kingdom in the local neighborhood and around the world.

I had the opportunity to ask Pat a little bit more about his church and how they have transformed into a "sending church" over time.

Tell me about some unique things your church is doing in outreach.

I don't know if we do anything that's really "unique." I would describe our outreach as "simple." I think Jesus' was too. He simply told his disciples, to "Go, make disciples." That's what we teach our people. We challenge them to live sent lives in every domain of their life. We tell our people that we have no marketing campaign. We don't blanket the community with fliers. We don't rent billboards. We tell our people they are the--> Click Here

Is Your Church A Messy Church Or Pretending Church?

Someone asked me how things were going recently. It’s not really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (‘good’ or ‘bad’) question. Life in our congregation is messy. People have a wide variety of problems and many of those problems are out on the table. Are things going well when one of your members has been hauled out of a pub in drunken state? When people admit problems in their marriage? When several people are struggling with depression? And I could go on. Actually I think the answer can be ‘Yes, things are going well’. A key verse for me in recent years has been the first beautitude which I paraphrase as: ‘Blessed are the broken people for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ To working with broken people is to be where God’s blessing is found. I do not rejoice in people’s problems, but I do rejoice that I am working among... Continue reading.

Missionaries to the United States

What about missions over here... in the United States? What does it look like?

Are we doing this to our own people here in the states?

When Pastors and Churches Reject Mission

A man leaves a small village and started his journey to Quito, Ecuador.  He has to walk for 8 hours, catch a small plane for a two-hour flight, and then get on a bus for 10 hours.  He arrives at the big city and begins searching for someone to take up the work he’s been doing with a couple of Shuar Indian Tribes in the Jungle.  His name is José and he has high hopes that he will find someone with a heart for mission, someone with who’s willing to “go the extra mile” to bring the good news, and someone who can continue the work of making disciples.  He spends a few days in Quito visiting various churches and speaking with many Pastors, but finds no one who is even disposed to entertain the idea.
José leaves the big city of Quito having been rejected by every church and every pastor.  They send him to “The Camp.”  The Camp is the area where we work.  The camp is very rural, peppered with poverty, and often inconvenient for daily living... continue

Brain Rules- Something to Consider

Brain Rules

08/26/2013 BY KEITH BURNETTLEAVE A COMMENT

Brain Rules. Educators know it.  Advertisers employ it.  Infants and toddlers live by it.  Humans learn and retain more from seeing than hearing. Poets know it, I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day, (Edgar Guest).  Humorists know it, Actions speak louder than words but not nearly as often, (Mark Twain).  Does the Church know it?

If a sermon lived is what the world wants to see, then cultural decline would be proof of poor ‘preaching.’   A sermon lived is exactly what God ordered, Let your light so shine before men that may they see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

What is the goal of acting out a sermon?   Some want the ‘sermon’ of their life to tell others what to believe.  

Some want their ‘sermon’ to tell others how to behave.  Still others want their ‘sermon’ to proclaim their own “godliness.”  They are kind of like the Pharisee who prayed and thanked God he wasn’t like other men (especially the ‘sinner’ beside him who wouldn’t lift his eyes to heaven).  Still another group wants their ‘sermon’ to detail the correctness of their theology.  These ‘sermons’ miss the mark and communicate poorly.  This is the stuff of which Paul wrote in I Cor. 13, If I preach eloquently, if I heal the sick, or suffer as a martyr but don’t have love, I am a noisy distraction and no one pays attention (my paraphrase).  May I suggest the world is not paying attention?  When our ‘living sermons’ show a desperate world we love them, and God loves them, they will listen.  They don’t  need better eyes, we need better ‘sermons.’

Yes, we do learn more from seeing than hearing, but we learn even more if we see and hear the same thing!  Think about it.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Brain Rules, by John Medina, examines why we learn as we do and its implications on the future of business, education, and the internet.

How Great Is Our God!

The splendor of a king
Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice, all the earth rejoice

Terangnya bersinar
Keglapan t'lah sirna
Sujudlah pada-Nya, sujudlah pada-Nya

Наш Бог так велик
Пой со мной
Наш Бог так велик
Пусть видят все
Наш Бог, наш Бог так велик

Age to age He stands 
And time is in His hands 
Beginning and the end 
Beginning and the end 

Los tres en uno son

La santa trinidad

Cordero y el león

Cordero y el león

Cuan grande es Dios

Y todos lo verán

Cuan grande es Dios

Name above all names 
Worthy of our praise 
My heart will sing 
How great is our God 

How great is our God, sing with me 
How great is our God, and all will see 
How great, how great is our God

我神真伟大歌颂你圣名真伟大
 

What is Worldview? Do you have one?

Proverbs 23:7b

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he