Intersected

From the Crossway blog and Joe Carter, who writes for First Things, among many other places.

Whether you are defending your faith, telling someone about God, or simply in a discussion—these simple tips can help you communicate effectively without high blood pressure or raising your voice:

1. Start with examples your audience will understand: Always start with an example or concept your audience knows, understands, or finds interesting, and connect it to your core message.
2. Speak your audience’s language: When you speak to an audience, to the extent possible, you must speak their language.
3. Use witness: Consider the use of witnesses essential to the construction of an effective message based on narrative and ethos. Wherever possible, elicit testimonies.
4. Know when to speak: There are a lot of important topics in the world, and it is not necessary that you have something to say about all of them—particularly if speaking on the topic would hurt your credibility or detract from your primary goal.
5. And know when to be silent: Silence is one of the most powerful forms of communication. It shows that you are in control and gives the person or people a moment to think for themselves and consider how they will respond to your message

Read full article from Relevant Magazine here. Adapted from How to Argue Like Jesus.

Informative post from Scott Thomas, Acts 29 Director. The Acts 29 assessment process is very thorough and this post is encouraging for me. I would rather not be admitted into Acts 29 and not plant a church than to be encouraged to plant when it may not be best suited for me.

In April, I posted the 10 Characteristics of a Church Planter – a compilation of the characteristics and micro-skills we look for in planters – informed by our own Acts 29 assessment, and the assessment work of Charles Ridley, Mark Dever, J. Allen Thompson and others. The full list of characteristics and their corresponding 60 micro-skills is available here.

Since then, I wanted to know just how important each characteristic and micro-skill was to our Acts 29 members who are doing assessments, and wanted to created a standard minimum score for the 10 Characteristics.

We polled our members, and from a little over 80 responses gathered some very helpful data I’d like to share with you.

General Scoring

With a possible 300 points available among 60 micro-skills, the minimum score required was 84%.

The Top Three Characteristics:

1. Spiritual Vitality (93% score minimum)
2. Strong Marriage & Family Life (88% score minimum)
3. Theological Clarity (87% score minimum)

An encouraging element of second and third places is that they display a balance amongst our church planters in both the mental and applied knowledge of their theological beliefs. We do not want to be among the pastors who sacrifice their families for ministry, and divorce head-knowledge of the gospel from our personal practice of it.

The Top Five Micro-Skills:

1. “He gives evidence of a personal relationship with Jesus and a transformed life.” (4.9/5) -Spiritual Vitality
2. “He has a deep commitment to Biblical authority.” (4.8/5) – Spiritual Vitality
3. “He confesses the life of an Elder above reproach.” (4.8/5) – Spiritual Vitality
4. “He models a lifestyle of following Jesus.” (4.8/5) – Disciple-Making Skills
5. “He professes a healthy sexual relationship and purity within marriage.” (4.7/5) – Strong Marriage & Family Life

Our next step is to apply all the scores we have and weight our assessments appropriately. We are thankful to all the Acts 29 members who participated in this survey, helping us sharpen our assessment even more.