So far Germany’s brilliance in attack has derailed the World Cup campaigns of Australia (4-0), England (4-1) and Argentina (4-0). Yet just six years ago the national team returned from 2004 European Championship in Portugal without winning a single game. Jurgen Klinsmann tells the story of how German football was rebuilt from the ground up. [...]
Category Archives: Revitalization
The fall from greatness
21 April, 2010 – 4:07 PM
I’ve come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall. [...]
Why the exception?
29 March, 2010 – 9:47 AM
One hundred and ten people turned up for an Adventist church planting summit in Western Australia recently. Up from forty-five the year before. Two new churches have already been started since the summit. They’re not just starting individual churches, whole networks of new churches are popping up. Among indigenous people, immigrants and Aussie battlers. Another [...]
What should the Anglicans do?
28 February, 2008 – 5:42 AM
It is no exaggeration to say that the global Anglican church of is at a crossroads facing its greatest crisis since the Reformation. It’s been there at least since the 1998 Lambeth Conference when the vast majority of Anglican bishops worldwide rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.” Despite this the Episcopal church in the [...]
The life and death of Christian movements
29 August, 2007 – 11:24 AM
I’ve reflected recently about God’s activity in shaping a leader through the painful experience of being unravelled: the Wall. It’s a recurring pattern in the lives of leaders who finish well. The same pattern is clearly discerned in the birth and rebirth of Christian movements. God unmakes his people in order to reshape them. The [...]
Disney takes over Pixar takes over Disney
6 June, 2006 – 7:43 AM
How do you breathe new life into Disney animation? Simple. You don’t. This is what you do instead. . . Start a new company called Pixar. Produce film after film that everyone wants to watch— Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Films that succeed “because they [...]
The New and the Old
7 November, 2005 – 7:50 AM
Andrew makes a good point about our understanding of church renewal and decline, “There seems to be an inherent danger with just giving something a certain timespan and then ‘writing it off’.” GK Chesterton agrees, “Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid [...]
The Moravian Missionary Movement
1 September, 2005 – 6:20 PM
Following my post on Encounter—Transformation—Mission, here’s a case study on the emergence of the Moravian missionary movement in the first half of the eighteenth century. 1. Dissonance From childhood, Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf had been devoted to Christ and committed to the spread of Christianity throughout the world. In 1722, in his early twenties, he opened [...]
Encounter. Transformation. Mission.
22 August, 2005 – 9:22 PM
The breakthroughs in the renewal and expansion of the Church have always begun on the fringe. The spark and the fuel for the fire is a powerful encounter with God constructively channeled into renewal and mission. Movements cannot be manufactured or controlled. Those most open to empowering spiritual experiences are those who sense their need [...]
Azusa Street and the Future of Pentecostalism
25 July, 2005 – 12:09 PM
Breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no same mortal could understand, the newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles. Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street. . . and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work [...]
