Most people who know me well know what I think about John Maxwell's body of work. I must say I was pleasantly surprised, however, when I read this snippet of an interview with the "leadership guru" in Rev Magazine recently:

Rev!: What would you do differently if you were starting over today?
Maxwell: I’d have a lot less church; I’d have less programs; I’d have less services. I’d have a lot less of everything.
Rev!: Why?
Maxwell: As a pastor I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but one of my major mistakes was thinking that life revolved around the local church and what we were doing. For example, if you were a member of the church, you had to have a ministry in the church. That was a huge mistake. I had high-capacity people in my church doing things that were pretty mundane for business people. If I had it to do over again, I’d have people doing a lot more ministry outside the church, in their workplace or in their community or in their volunteer organizations. I’d find out where they had the greatest influence and make their ministry where their greatest influence was, not confine it to a church. Huge mistake I made. And I didn’t see it until I was out, but I was too inward. I had a lot of high-capacity people who were probably never “salt and light” like they could have been. I’d change that immediately if I went back to the local church. I’d be much more into how we influenced the community and a lot less into “How can I get everybody onboard with my church and with my program?”

(If you want, you can read the rest of the interview here.)

Kari and I also listened to a message by Brian McLaren which was recommended to me both by Jason and linked on James' blog. It was very insightful and challenging, which will be no surprise to anyone who has read McLaren.

In light of some challenges which face the EPIC service here at BCN, we've decided to start an EPIC blog, administrated mostly by Jason, the teaching pastor in EPIC. It can be found here (right now all that is on there is a test post about how lousy the Green Bay Packers were in their preseason game against the Bengals). Hopefully we'll get it up and running soon.

Well, just an update on us. We're wading through (and really enjoying) "The Challenge of Jesus."

I've noticed a couple friends asking anyone who reads their blogs to post a comment to say how they stumbled there, how often they read, etc. This seems like a good idea. So, post away.