Recently Acts 29 member and Network Director for Georgia, Matt Adair, had the opportunity to preach to a group of 400 inmates a state prison. More than just seeing up to 50 conversions, he got the jaw-dropping gift of seeing "cultural outcasts discover that they could be part of God’s family because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus on their behalf."
by Matt Adair
‘...he is not ashamed to call them brothers.’ (Hebrews 2:11)
I was arrested twice in high school - once for stealing a pack of baseball cards from an Albertson’s and then again several months later for using the same five-finger discount at a record store next door to pilfer a cassette single of Aerosmith’s ‘Sweet Emotion’. I spent a couple of hours in the juvenile ...
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By Matt Adair
When you think of the leaders in your core group, who comes to mind?
Asking that question to church planters or leaders of missional communities elicits the same response - it never takes them a full minute to write out their list, they’re never satisfied by the quantity or quantity of leadership and they’re confident that if they just got the right people behind their vision then all would be well.
So then I’ll have them write out the names of the rest of their core group or community and ask this question - why are they not leaders...and how do you know that?
Almost every working definition of leadership confuses effort with success. You aren’t a leader if you can persuade Jim to head up your finance team even though he’s slammed at work ...
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It’s really easy for church planters to jack up the entire enterprise of leadership.
When I showed up in Athens, GA in June 2004 to serve as pastor of Christ Church Presbyterian and achieve world domination before the age of 30, it became quickly obvious that the leadership pipeline in the church was rusted out and seemingly beyond repair. The same handful of men had occupied the same handful of positions for years and there was no one ready or willing or able to come alongside and help carry the load.
I’ll be honest. I thought these guys were dumb. So of course I decided that we needed to get our elders and deacons out of town for a weekend so I could use the Bible as a lead pipe to break their jaw so they wouldn’t have the ability or the audacity to get a word in ...
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Matt Adair is replanter of Christ Community Church in Athens, Georgia. He wrote earlier this month on Embracing Your Unique Gifting and Leveraging it for Jesus’ Mission. Here he looks at the power source for the church’s employment of their gifts.
Entrepreneurial Aptitude - A Sacred Trust
Church planters are gluttons for punishment.
The spiritual soil of the cities we dig around in often feels like petrified clay. The first people to jump on the bandwagon as we plot world domination will most likely abandon us. The stress that comes from denominational agencies, our families and the deepest recesses of our souls is a force powerful enough to stop a charging rhino dead in his tracks.
And now I’m asking you to take another whack of the paddle by leading with ...
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Matt Adair replanted and pastors Christ Community Church in Athens, Georgia. To hear more from Matt, check out his audio teachings here.
‘He looks silly!’
Now if you had seen the picture of David wearing Saul’s armor that I was looking at with my five-year old son, you would agree with his assessment. And what makes this scene even more silly than the visual of an oversized helmet and XXL body armor on a M sized body is that David was already an accomplished warrior (think bears and lions). He already had the weapons needed to fight but was put in a situation where he was told he would have to wear another man’s gear in order to succeed.
Some of us in church planting world look pretty silly. We are self-starters by nature but in the name of success and ...
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