Jason Locke's Blog

Editor's note: Here’s the first guest column on church renewal. In the coming weeks, you'll read insightful articles from great thinkers and pioneer church leaders like Mark Love, Jeff Childers, Mike Cope, Chris Flanders, Jarrod Robinson and more. The first article on renewal is from Ron Clark, a native of the Midwest who moved to the Pacific Northwest almost 20 years ago. Ron came to the conclusion that the best way to bring about church renewal was to relinquish his career as a minister and plant a church under the coaching of Kairos Church Planting. He now leads the Agape Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon, a church he planted six years ago with his wife Lori. Ron has been deeply engaged in the greater Portland community for years, and he has accumulated great wisdom about the kind of church renewal needed to meet the difficult needs of the West Coast. The View from Ron Clark “Have you thought about church planting?” Dr. Stan Granberg asked as we sat at Starbuc...

Editor’s note: Here’s another in our series of guest columns on church decline. Coming articles will focus on renewal. Our eleventh guest column (on this issue) is from Stan Granberg, the founder and director of Kairos Church Planting Ministries . Stan grew up in the Pacific Northwest. After years as a church-planter in Kenya and as a teacher in the southern US, he returned to the Northwest to find a changing landscape among Churches of Christ. In the article below, Stan describes the impact this has made on his work for the Kingdom. The View from Stan Granberg I grew up in the Seattle/Tacoma area. During the 1970s and 1980s our fellowship of Churches of Christ had a dynamic feel to it. Our camps were full. Youth events were frequent and dynamic. The Great Northwest Evangelism Workshop was drawing 2,000 or so participants. We had no megachurches but the incoming people outnumbered the outgoing and our church life seemed good.  When I returned to Portland, Oregon to...