On September 25, 2011, two Acts 29 churches, Coram Deo Church and Core Community Church, merged together. These two churches, which have been pacesetters in the work of urban, missional church planting in the Midwest, joined forces as one church. Below is their story or you can watch the video they made, describing how they came to merger together and talking about the implications of doing so.
by Bob Thune
Core Community Church was founded by Ethan Burmeister in the fall of 2000. It was only the fourth church to join the Acts 29 Network. Ethan was, in many ways, a man ahead of his time. Ideas like “missional church” were not yet commonplace. Conversations about the intersection of missiology and ecclesiology were just beginning – in places like Seattle and ...
Keep Reading
Bob Thune, Lead Pastor of Coram Deo Church Community in Omaha, NE
Not every church plant has a boxing bag as part of their office furniture. Our church was kind of odd that way.
My cousin J.D. – now an Acts 29 church planter in South Africa – was a volunteer intern on our launch team. He was also an amateur boxer who was training to compete in the Golden Gloves tournament. During his lunch breaks, he’d strap on the boxing gloves and go a few rounds with the body bag in the back corner of our borrowed office space.
Watching J.D. train taught me an important lesson: vision and training go hand-in-hand. You begin with a vision of the kind of person you want to become. And then you train with that goal in mind. J.D. wanted to be a successful boxer, so he put in the time and ...
Keep Reading
By Bob Thune
Before church planting I worked for a parachurch missions agency that required staff to raise their own financial support. Every year I helped to train hundreds of Jesus-loving, mission-driven, starry-eyed new staff recruits in fundraising. And every year we told them the same thing: “If you can’t raise your financial support within 12 months, that probably means God isn’t calling you to this ministry.”
The logic was simple: if God has called, God will provide. If God is not providing, perhaps you’re misreading his call.
Unfortunately, no one is giving church planters a similar litmus test. We tell them that it’s going to be hard and difficult and they’d better be ready for a beating. As a result, many naïve young men assume ...
Keep Reading
