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I am the pastor of Faith Free Will Baptist Church in Chandler, IN. All opinions or views expressed here are solely mine. To find out more about me check the profile page.
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Favorite Tweets of June

By Daniel Edwards | July 13, 2010

This round up is a little late, but it is awesome nonetheless.

Enjoy the great tweets & find some good people to follow.

(The World Cup is a consistent theme this month. Look for a special faves post devoted to #NAFWB in a couple weeks. [When the #WorldCup gets as big as #NAFWB it will get its own faves post too...])

Follow me on Twitter.

Follow our church on Twitter.

See other Favorite Tweet posts.

Love those!

Have I mentioned I hate Wal-mart?

Jealous. She got Haven a cool shirt!

Being Retweeted by Dave Ferguson is one of my top twitter moments.

Haha/Ouch.

Nope.

Topics: All, General | No Comments »

Book Review: Exponential - How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement

By Daniel Edwards | June 12, 2010

Through blogs, books, and Twitter I have found a lot of useful ideas from Dave and Jon Ferguson at Community Christian Church in Chicago. Plus I enjoyed The BIG IDEA, so I jumped at the chance* to read and review their latest book: Exponential - How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement.

Exponential proved to be practical, encouraging, enjoyable, and challenging.

Practical

The book covers practices and strategies that Community Christian Church has put to use for the last several years, so they are the product of real life situations. At one point, Dave says “what follows is something of a glance over our shoulder, looking back at the path we’ve taken.” That sentence stood out as a  statement that is appropriate for the entire book, not just that section.

While I appreciate books written from experience, some of those books can come across as arrogant (as in, “if you get on the ball you could do what we did”). There is not a hint of that in this book. Again and again the book communicates that these ideas are simple and can be put to use in any size or type of church. While CCC is many times our church’s size, the strategies in the book can be implemented in our church today (and they are).

Encouraging

The book gets started with an emphasis on the fact that “you” the reader can accomplish the mission that God has placed you on, and that theme repeats throughout. As I read Exponential- I felt more and more confident that we could see the reproduction of ministry and leaders that Dave and Jon have witnessed. Another encouraging point is that the reproduction that they have seen has not been through outside hiring of experts and gurus but through an investment in the people in their church. Their capability to multiply their effort and outreach is accessible.

Enjoyable

A book of simple but effective concepts makes for an interesting and enjoyable read. Dave and Jon wanted these concepts to be simple enough to write down on a napkin, so they can be easily remember and easily shared.  Plus, while the book is written in from Dave’s perspective, Jon has boxes or “thought bubbles” throughout. His additional info, humorous remarks, Chicago Cubs references, and jabs at his brother are great.

Challenging

Exponential isn’t about how you can be better, faster, stronger. It isn’t about becoming the spiritual giant and 6 sigma leader that is required to make a difference. It shares a strategy for seeing everyday people become leaders who help others become leaders. It is about chain reaction and multiplying multipliers. This book lays out how you can invest in those around you and see them step up to the plate and lead. That is challenging. You see, if doing ministry is all about one incredible leader or if it is about great resources, technology, and buildings- many of us could easily make excuses as to why we are not moving forward. However, if it’s about building relationships and developing leaders and coaches- it is something we can all be doing.

When you finish exponential you have a simple path laid out before you and you’re left with no excuses as to why you can’t get started. That’s challenging.

——————

*By “Chance” I mean that I was offered the book in exchange for a commitment to publish a review.

Topics: All, Evangelism, General | 2 Comments »

Favorite Tweets of May

By Daniel Edwards | June 8, 2010

May was a great month for me. We found out that we are having a baby girl and that she is healthy. Nicole finished the school year which is normally a big deal but this year it was even bigger because we do not plan for her to return for some time (baby). Plus, Friend Day was in May and it was a great day for our church.

Of course, May was also a great because of these wonderful tweets!

I hope you will enjoy these favorites, find some good people to follow, and tweet well!

Follow me on Twitter.

Follow our church on Twitter.

See other Favorite Tweet posts.

I am pretty sure productivity dropped nation wide.

I can relate. Fortunately, my search for an outlet at the airport has never gotten this desperate.

This was in response to the funny thing I said in church on Friend Day. Read the Story Here.

We just decided on a name! Haven Carmichael Edwards. Look for a post about it soon.

We now know that is was not enough time to answer this question, or any question.

Topics: All, General | No Comments »

Friend Day ReCap

By Daniel Edwards | May 20, 2010

This past Sunday was Friend Day. Every year we designate a particular day and emphasize inviting friends, co-workers, family, classmates, neighbors, etc. We provide a lunch so people can stick around and get to know one another.

To help the church invite, we printed invite cards like this one.friend-day-card-2010

We also put together this short and humorous video to give people ideas on how they should or should not invite their friends.


This year’s Friend Day was an incredible success. There are a lot of things that I am excited about, so let me share a few with you:

  • Our attendance was higher than I have ever seen it personally.
  • Our new toddler class was overrun with kids! There were as many kids in the 2-5 year old’s class as there were in the 6-12 year old’s children’s church!
  • Only 4 children rode the church van to church this year as opposed to more than 15 on the day that comes closest to this one in attendance- what that means is that not only did we have more children but the children came to church with their families.
  • Someone who told me 2 years ago “I will never go to church again” was there this past Sunday.
  • Several of our guests were first time visitors- I think this is the result of people who are new to our church inviting a whole new group of people.
  • The crowd was attentive- sometimes on a special day where you have a lot of people who do not usually attend church, good portions of the crowd are not “into the sermon,” but I felt that 98% of the crowd was with me from start to finish this past Sunday.
  • I had non-believers tell me they appreciated the message- often they’ll say things like, “it was nice to be here” or “thanks for having us” instead.
  • We had a sharing time during our Sunday evening worship and several people were excited to have seen their friends and family there that morning.

Topics: All, Connect to Community, Evangelism, General, Sermons | No Comments »

Funny Story

By Daniel Edwards | May 16, 2010

Today was Friend Day and God did a lot of great things!

I am going to post about all of that later, but right now I want to share something funny that I did.

Today when I gave the announcements I let everyone know about our 246 meetings coming up next week. I tried to say:

Next Sunday night we will not have evening worship because we will break into groups and meet in people’s homes for worship and fellowship. There is more info on the bulletin board so check it out and sign up!

What I actually said was:

Next Sunday night we will not have evening worship because we will break into people’s homes for worship and fellowship. There is more info on the bulletin board so check it out and sign up!

Several people found this extremely funny, but others missed and didn’t know what was so funny. I was one of the people who missed it. In fact, we had a police officer visiting with us and on his way out he said, “breaking and entering, huh? I guess I will have to keep my eye on you!” Now, remember I had no idea what I had said, so I just smiled and nodded and thought, “this guy is crazy.” It wasn’t till later I realized what I had said, everyone laughed at, and what the police officer was kidding about.

I have been laughing about this all afternoon.

Topics: All, Connect to Community, General | 5 Comments »

Favorite Tweets of April

By Daniel Edwards | May 14, 2010

It is time (past time) for the latest round up of Favorite Tweets…

I enjoyed a lot of April Fool’s tweets last month. In fact I even did some myself:

Here are the favorites from April. See if you made the list, find some good people to follow, and tweet well.

Follow me here.

Follow our church here.

Check out previous Favorite Tweet lists here.

If you don’t know the context of this tweet, click the “in reply to jeffpost” link to see what David was talking about.

So smart, so wrong,  so funny.

This feels very familiar.

It’s mission impossible for me.

Introducing my brother.

Before this tweet I didn’t know about John Daker. If you haven’t heard the song stylings of Mr. Daker, check him out here.

  • Nicole Edwards Nicole_Edwards

    The only April Fool’s joke I can ever come up with is to tell people that I’m pregnant.

We had not told anyone yet.

Topics: All, General | No Comments »

Favorite Tweets of March

By Daniel Edwards | April 7, 2010

Here is the latest round-up. I hope you’ll enjoy and find some good people to follow!

We had just heard our baby’s heartbeat at the Dr.’s office!

Mentioning me increases your likelihood of getting on the list by about 1,000%.

Very true. Not sure I would have said during a college’s promotional weekend though!

David has a interesting post about how people like us hate each other less because of Twitter: Check it out.

Now the problem is only going to get worse! Hooray!

Topics: All, Connect to Community, General, Sermons | No Comments »

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