I’m excited to join the vidcast tomorrow of Tim Keller and the Leadership Summit people over at Willow Creek.

But in the meantime, take a look at this interview where Tim Keller talks about the 4 or 5 ways in which evangelism must be different today in order to be impactful.

One of Dr. Keller’s key points specifically applies to urban centers, such as Redeemer’s setting: NYC.  He talks about how critical it is for the Church to really provide the tools, resources, modeling and teaching to its people how to integrate their faith **in** their work.

IMHO, he is spot-on in that cities tend to have more vocationally focused people (people who live to work, vs. work to live), so building out ministries such as www.faithandwork.org is quite mandatory if there is to be any impact.

But the lesson can be applied to much broader applications.  The Church today can’t just teach objective knowledge about the Bible.  It can’t just focus upon spiritual praxis.  It can’t just just provide moral teachings as well.   Not anymore.

When non-Christians are exposed to the Church’s message, they really need to see how it looks like if they were to step into the light.

The only way to do that is to build communities where this intentional integration of the Gospel into vocation that Dr. Keller talks about is vibrantly embraced and highly visible.

The new rules and approach to evangelism now take on a wholistic ministry approach.  You do see that, right?

Why doesn’t Jesus show up in person on a TV screen, on a nice blank piece of paper, or someplace else that seems a little bit more reasonable than where people reportedly see him these days?

Our faith pushes us to expect the unexpected of God, especially during Advent, but in the residual grease of a frying pan where you just fried a cheeseburger?

Perhaps your faith is stronger than mine. . . .

I recently shared about the upcoming online conference, THE NINES, on 09/09/09 and 09:09am Central. It’s put on by Leadership Network and Catalyst.

Well, it’s here!

Here’s the tentative schedule of speakers (Eastern Time) — tons of great content available free to you:

9AM — Troy Gramling, Mark Beeson, Anne Jackson, Dave Ferguson, Scott Hodge

10AM — Perry Noble, Stacy Spencer

12PM — Dino Rizzo, Nancy Beach, Steven Furtick, Reggie McNeal

1PM — Craig Groeschel, Leonard Sweet, Greg Surratt, Jon Tyson

2PM — Margaret Feinberg, Larry Osborne, Matt Carter, Pete Wilson

3PM — Neil Cole, Reggie Joiner, JD Greear

4PM — Mark Batterson, Dan Kimball, Mark DeYmaz

5PM — Jud Wilhite, Brian McLaren, Bob Roberts, Rick McKinley, John Ortberg

6PM — Alan Hirsch, John Bishop, Toby Slough, Ed Stetzer

7PM — Mark Driscoll, Darrin Patrick, Brad Powell

8PM — Darrin Whitehead, Brian Bloye

9PM — Eric Bryant, Nancy Ortberg, Rick Warren

Wonder who’s going to put on The Tens on 10/10/10 at 10:10am?

Just got confirmation that Guy Kawasaki’s latest, www.alltop.com has selected Godvertiser.com to be featured on their http://CHURCH.alltop.com page.

If you haven’t heard of Alltop, it’s a neat news/blog aggregator that spans hundreds of categories – Guy’s metaphor is a newsstand rack of the best blogs in each section.

Kind of an neat to be up there with Craig Groeshel, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, DJ Chuang, and the other cool kids of Kingdomwork.  The Church Alltop page is a great place to find interesting content to stir things up in your mind about what’s going on with the church and faith today.

Thanks for reading and let me know of the top church marketing / church tech issues you’re facing with right now.

Today’s guest post is from Atlanta’s Rev. Joel Hug.  He has been meditating on Psalm 23 and shares with us what he has discovered about our God of Increase.

Psalm 23:1 – The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want.

This verse, I believe, has been twisted by Satan himself to force a crowbar into our lives and slowly dismantle our future.

If you look up the word “want” in history, the common definition today is “to desire”, which didn’t come into existence until the early 1700′s. Prior to this, (more…)

Today, you can grab any Christian Music mp3 download from Amazon for free.

Here’s the details of the free mp3 download offer from Amazon:

1. Click through to the Amazon Free mp3 promotion details page with this link: http://tinyurl.com/freemp3fromamazon
2. Click on the “ENTER CODE” button
3. Use code FIRSTMIL and click the “Apply” button
4. Go find your mp3 and then buy it!  The promo credit balance should be applied automatically.
5. Personally, I browsed through the Top 100 Christian Contemporary Music songs list and picked out Chris Tomlin’s God of This City.  Great song!
   

NOTE: According to Amazonmp3.com fine print, you must redeem the credit by September 6, 2009 11:59 PM PDT

Bonus: Here’s an extra freebie, How Great Is Our God, sung by Kimberly and Alberto Rivera

Super Bonus: You’re not satisfied with TWO free mp3 songs?  Will you be satisfied with 16 MORE Free Christian Music mp3 downloads?

A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they were on the way to church service:

‘And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?’

One bright little girl raised her hand eagerly because she knew the answer.

After the teacher acknowledged her enthusiasm, she simply replied. . . (more…)