With church planting and local church ministry philosophies abounding, Towers took a closer look into the lives and approaches to ministry of some church planters and local church practitioners.
The Jan. 25 Towers features a cover story on Steve Timmis and his approach to local church ministry. Timmis is the co-founder, with Tim Chester, of The Crowded House, a church planting initiative in Sheffield, UK. Timmis and Chester also co-authored “Total Church,” a book on local church ministry that some church planters view as foundational to their philosophy of ministry.
This issue also spotlights Nick Nye and Kevin Larson, two Southern Seminary graduates who are putting their theological training to work through church plants in Columbus, Ohio, and Columbia, Mo., respectively. Nye and Larson talk about church planting is actually like.
Michael McKinley says church planting is for wimps: real men do church revitalization (Yes, he is poking fun at church planters). Author of the forthcoming work “Church Planting is for Wimps: How God Uses Messed-up People to Plant Ordinary Churches that Do Extraordinary Things,” McKinley discusses his approach to church revitalization/planting in a Q&A with Towers.
Other features of this issue of Towers:
- “Does God hate Haiti?” R. Albert Mohler Jr. addresses the recent tragedy in Haiti and provides a Christian response. Look for more on how evangelical Christians in general and Southern Seminary faculty, students and alumni are ministering amid this catastrophic event in the next issue of Towers.
- Faculty profile on J.D. Payne. Payne serves as associate professor of church planting and evangelism and is the director of Southern’s Church Planting Center. Payne is the author of Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting, The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members and Missional House Churches: Reaching Our Communities with the Gospel.
- Scott Thomas, director of Acts 29, answered questions about the church planting network at the Acts 29 boot camp in November of last year.
- Three questions with Nathan Finn, assistant professor of church history and Baptist studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.