the Glocal Trekker Blog

I can't believe it's done - but it is - I finished my third book. It won't be out for a year. It's on how churches start churches out of their local church. I believe it's the biggest missing link in what we need to see a church planting movement take place today in the West. I contrast movements, multiplication, and the role of local churches in all that. I then deal with some practical issues of how you actually do it in your local church. Lots of editing to do, etc. But the biggest part of it is over and I'm pumped. It's taken a couple of days to decompress from the pressure - but it's off! The first picture shows where I wrote the first half of it - Hanoi. The second picture shows where I wrote the second half - my study at home. I actually picked it up some for the picture. Generally when I write books are all over, lectures, notes, pages - not today!!!!!! My office is back to normal.

...... But not for long - I have a fourth book I will begin working on in May. I'm already reading and studying for it. It's also something we've already done at NorthWood and continue to do. Frankly, it is the second most exciting book I've been waiting to write about. The first 3 dealt with things we've learned at NorthWood and how we operate and any church can. The fourth will be the same except there's going to be a massive application component with a forward future thrust to it. This first most exciting will be when I write on the Kingdom of God - but other than talking about it in every book - I don't want to write on that yet. Anything I write on the Kingdom at this point will be premature. I'm learning too much, changing, and developing too much here to write on it at this point. It may be 15 years before I'm ready to write on it - and even then, how can anything about the Kingdom be definitive? You're always growing, and learning and changing - at least I hope I am.

There are other books I want to write. I'd like to write a book on parenting. I'd like to write a book called "The Christian and the Communist" - the story of NorthWood in Vietnam and lessons we in the West can learn from Vietnam. I'd like to write a book on, "An Evangelical Alternative to the Arab-Isreali Crisis." I love writing on global issues - there really isn't that much in American Christianity on that - other than far right Americana that mixes culture and religion with a little Bible and a lot of eisegesis. At stake is, how do we see this new emerging world through God's eyes and then engage it.

Transformation just came out in Korean. I found a copy of Transformation in Korean on my desk - it looks so cool! The Koreans out did themselves in how they put the book together - I like it better than the English version and I can't read it!

I'm going to start posting some on books I'm reading. I highly highly recommend David Naugle's book WORLDVIEW - but read the footnotes. Only serious readers and thinkers need tackle this one.

HAD A BLAST IN SAN DIEGO AT FLOOD CHURCH and pastor Matt! I flew in in time to speak Friday night to a few hundred of their leaders - left the next morning at 6am but wow. Primarily a "college" church of thousands and they've come together en masse to engage their community and the world. Only a couple of years old and already started 2 churches, already adopted a nation and city overseas, already doing heavy work in their community. If I was 20 years younger and was going to start a church again - I'd find the biggest college campus I could, in the biggest city I could, in the oldest part of the city there was - and do it there!!! Multi-ethnic, multi-class, multi-generation - that would be a flat place with potential for engaging the world!