"There are 120 million unchurched people in the United States making it the largest mission field in the Western hemisphere and the fifth largest mission field on earth. Non‐believers can be divided into two groups of people; nominally churched, which make up 30% of U.S. population and the radically unchurched, which makes up 40% of the U.S. population. (Yes, I hear you: I'm not at all sure either that the remaining 30% of the US population are actually converted Christians.)

An excerpt from Grow: Reproducing Through Organic Discipleship (p.14) on the American church:

"The sad fact is that the church is one of the last places that people look for authentic spirituality. Most people say that church is boring, irrelevant, dry, complicated, even domesticated. Part of the problem stems from the fact that many churches are still functioning the same way they were in the 1940’s. At the turn of the century, the church became more rational than relational, more organizational than organic, more political than prayerful, and more structural than spiritual. Today, many of the churches in North America are anything but relevant."

And, from Jesus:

...because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. - Rev 3:16-19

We often don't know what normal is anymore, and so it looks extraordinary, and beyond our reach—even, wrong. Acts isn't finished (it's just folded neatly and put away in the Old-Stuff-Replaced-by-Mans-Better-Ideas Chest). The Church Planting Manual has been used for twelve years now as a key to open storage chests around the world, unwrapping the "old stuff" once again. And men are being set free.

A missionary said recently that much of the work overseas is "unteaching" western traditions and setting people free from the heavy, suffocating practices promoted by the authority of men. Set free from these traditions, Christians can instead bow their knees to and serve the Living God with full authority to obey Him. This is our prayer to God now for North America, too. This is the field to which laborers are also needed, and are also coming, and are also being raised up by God. The church in North America, like the Laodicean church, may be blind to its strangled and destitute condition, thinking itself full, "phat" and fit. Yet, we are actually in desperate need. This is tragic, but not hopeless. God's power is more than a match for our chains and poverty all over the world. Even here.

. . . With God, all things are possible

Let's believe Him. This site provides opportunity for scattered and isolated people (in regards to these ideas) to come online and study the Bible and connect with other disciples exploring the same concepts. There are also experienced people coming alongside to encourage and to keep pointing us to the bible—what does it say?—back to the bible—does it say that? Then the light comes on. God's authority is grasped and traditions that don't line up are no longer barriers to blessing and fruitfulness. More importantly, Christians are responding to His word, resulting in joyful labor born and sustained by love's response to grace.

Yours in the work, along with many brothers laboring together.