Bob Logan Blog

[featured_image]Bob Logan became a mentor to me as I planted a church in Southern California in 1990. I’ll never forget the conversation we had just a month before our public grand opening. He looked me right in the eye and said – “Dave, just be prepared to have a premature birth.”

The reality at that time was that we weren’t nearly prepared for all that was involved with starting public worship services. Yet miraculously, God was gracious and we launched with just over 200 people on our first Sunday. Thanks to Bob’s input through the New Church Incubator pilot that he had recently started and fantastic coaching by his colleague Steve Ogne, we were able to move forward toward a healthy start that didn’t require time in the neo-natal intensive care unit.

Bob’s book Beyond Church Growth was published in 1990. Every chapter helped shape my philosophy and plan for planting a church. Here are the big ideas he wrote about 20 years ago.

• Visionizing Faith and Prayer
• Effective Pastoral Leadership
• Culturally Relevant Philosophy of Ministry
• Celebrative and Reflective Worship
• Holistic Disciple-making
• Expanding Network of Small Groups
• Developing and Resourcing Leaders
• Mobilizing Believers According to Spiritual Gifts
• Appropriate and Productive Programming
• Starting Churches that Reproduce

Over the past twenty years, Bob Logan has influenced thousands of church plants throughout the United States and beyond. Together with Steve Ogne, he developed The Church Planter’s Toolkit a great resource which is still helping to prepare planters to birth new churches. I often wished this resource was available when I planted Lake Hills, yet I’m grateful I was there in the audience for the recording of the audio resource.

Here’s another thing that I appreciate about Bob – he’s continually expressed genuine interest in me and my life. I was on vacation a few years ago with my family – and when Bob heard I was in the same community where he was on vacation too, he made sure we spent some time together. How cool is that? I got an email from him this week and he simply said, “If you have a chance I’d love an update on how you’re doing these days.” The last time I was with Bob he made sure I had his personal phone number because he wanted to keep in touch. Here’s what Bob communicates – I care about you and what’s going on in your life. I hope that I communicate that to those whom I coach and train.

The most important lesson that I’ve learned from Bob is this: Disciplemaking starts with non-disciples, not Christians. I’m sure Bob’s not the first one to articulate that thought – Jesus did a long time ago. But Bob helped me to change my perspective on disciplemaking. It’s not just a follow-up program for new believers, it’s a way of life for all Christians. (see Disciplemaking Starts with Non-Disciples) A few years ago, my colleague Sammy Mureithi invited me to join him for a coach training program designed by Bog Logan and CoachNet. It was fantastic. I loved hanging out with Bob and I learned so much more about how to be a good coach. The biggest learning for me that week was to allow the client to set the agenda for the coaching session. In preparation for that training event, I read Bob’s book Coaching 101. If you’d like to grow in your coaching skills, I highly recommend it (read more here).

I’ve been serving as the Director of Church Multiplication for the Missionary Church Western District for nearly 10 years. I started serving in that role as a result of Steve and Bob’s preparation through the Church Planting Institute (CPI). Bob developed a training process which helped our district to develop the systems for multiplying churches. By utilizing Bob’s systems, we’ve started four churches every year for the past four years.

Bob is also the founder of CoachNet – a great online resource for church planters and for those who coach them. If you aren’t familiar yet with CoachNet – go to www.coachnet.org.

Here’s Bob’s latest perspective…Church as usual isn’t working. I know it and you know it. It’s way too complicated and you’re not even getting the results you want. You know there’s more, and you’re getting frustrated. As a visionary, you can see the need for something new– something simple, something real and authentic. I see that need too. I’m currently planting a network of missional house churches with multi-ethnic leaders in Los Angeles, so I see the cultural shifts that have taken place and how they change the way church looks and functions. (from Bob’s blog)

Now Bob is developing ViaCordis, a multi-ethnic missional house church network in the L.A. area. You can read more about that here.

It’s really great to see that Bob is continuing to follow Jesus and seeking to achieve success in life – which his dad taught him years ago was simply joining God in what He’s doing. Bob is a great example to me of what it means to join God.

Recently, Bob has started a new blog on leadership. I highly recommend it: www.loganleadership.com