Encouragement from “AND” for Austin New Church

Last week in Orlando at the Exponential Church Planters Conference a new book was released in the Exponential Series by Zondervan called “AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church“. In it, authors Hugh Halter and Matt Smay (Tangible Kingdom) wrote some incredibly encouraging words about Austin New Church that I feel really captures our heart and [...]

Focus Week (Friday): Sacrifice

All week we’ve been asking and looking for God’s answer to the question… What can I do to be more generous?” This weekend at Austin New Church, we will be having a time of prayer and commitment with the hope of corporately celebrating what God has said. During this time we will take a special [...]

Advent Conspiracy: Spend Less.

To Listen or Download Sermon click HERE. When we fail to see our ABUNDANCE, we fail to see what we have as a GIFT.  Our perspective will be that it’s ours to SPEND instead of ours to STEWARD.  We won’t be THANKFUL for what we have, we’ll be less CONTENT, and we’ll constantly want MORE, [...]

Missional Church: Year in Review

Many of you have requested an additional look at the ANC Mission Report for August 2008-September 2009. Below is from the document we handed out at our gathering this past Sunday. Please be in prayer as we consider both personally and corporately how we can “Love our Neighbor and Serve our City (and world)” even [...]

Missional Church – Characteristics of a Missional Church, Pt. 3

A few weeks ago, I started a mini-blog series on the different characteristics of a missional church.  These are not my original thoughts, in fact, I am steeling this from Tim Keller.  The reason behind this series is due to the fact that the word ‘missional’ has become associated with fads and things we ‘do.’  [...]

Tangible Kingdom (Week 8 Day 5) “Fork in the Road”

As with many community groups going through the Tangible Kingdom Primer, ours from ANC were pre-existing groups (with an already missional and service oriented DNA). In addition to helping us grow in an understanding for who we should be, each of us have seen how the study could be really useful for establishing new groups [...]

Tangible Kingdom (Week 7 Day 5) “Party”

Today’s reading forces us to reflect on community itself. I love the simplicity of our challenge to just throw a party. So much goes into that simple act. Where should it be held so that it’s most conducive to meet the needs of whoever is coming (and their kids)? What should we do? What should [...]

Tangible Kingdom (Week 6 Day 7) “The Secret Killer”

For close to seven weeks now, we’ve been working pretty hard to gain a greater understanding of what incarnational community looks like. I’ve had some amazing conversations and am hearing awesome stories of those who literally had no context for mission, who now hold a strong or strongly developing missional theology. Great stuff. That being [...]

Tangible Kingdom (Week 6 Day 6) “Materialism”

I just don’t think I can put it any better than Hugh and Matt did in section 6.6 Materialism is the belief that the quality of one’s life is defined by what someone owns. This belief is what drives people to work too hard and neglect the important things. It will limit a person’s ability [...]

Missional Church: Austin Disaster Relief Network

ANC’ers, As I walked out of my meeting with the director of the Austin Disaster Relief Network, I couldn’t help but think back to last year’s hurricane Ike.  For those who were here, do you remember what it was like?  We exemplified a church, who like Acts 2 says, were in common and gave of [...]