ben's blog

New blog, new season - Go to bensternke.com

Amazing how time flies! I started this blog over four years ago to document some of the questions I was wrestling through as I tried to figure out church and ministry and culture and Christian witness in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.

And while today certainly doesn't end the asking of those kinds of questions, it does mark the end of this blog. I am heading into a new season of life and it felt like a good "line in the sand" to start a new blog with a new direction and focus for my writing.

The new season is that I am planting a church in Fort Wayne along with several others who have been meeting, worshiping, dreaming, arguing and praying together for the past 18 months or so. I will be cycling out of pastoral oversight duties at Heartland, but will likely continue there for a season in a part-time capacity as we get a foundation in place to plant.

As we head into this exciting new venture, I'm going to be learning and wondering and asking and reading and risking and doing, and I am eager to share that journey with others. I will be sharing the vision we have and the questions we're wrestling with and would love it if you'd join the conversation.

So starting today, I am blogging at bensternke.com, and won't be blogging here any more (Update your links please! I think my RSS feed should stay the same, though). Hope to keep hearing from y'all on the Interwebs!

Decisions, decisions...

Trying to take this to heart in these times (from Seth Godin):

First rule of decision making: More time does not create better decisions.

In fact, it usually decreases the quality of the decision.

More information may help. More time without more information just creates anxiety, not insight.

Deciding now frees up your most valuable asset, time, so you can go work on something else. What happens if, starting today, you make every decision as soon as you have a reasonable amount of data?

Pray for wisdom, discernment, courage, and faith. Make the decision and get to work on the important stuff, Ben. Or, as I've heard it said... ready, fire, aim.

Economic recession as a blessing for mission

The following quote is an answer Skye Jethani gave to a question Dave Fitch asked about Skye's new book (which I'd like to read) called The Divine Commodity. It revolves around how the current economic recession can be a catalyst for church leaders to begin to steer their congregations toward missional engagement, because of the disruption it is causing in people's attachment to their consumer identities (and the amount of cash available to build a consumer church).

I quote Skye's comments at length because they are so closely aligned with my own convictions. Read on for the quote.

Church planting and the Neo-Reformed

Dave Fitch has a post up exploring some observations and theories about church-planting among the "Neo-Reformed" (especially Mark Driscoll and Acts 29 as well as Tim Keller's work at Redeemer in NY).

Interestingly enough, Tim Keller showed up to make a couple comments and offer some "pushback" to Dave's observations. It's an interesting exchange between two very bright minds. Check it out if this topic interests you.