5 Essential Ingredients for Planting Purpose Driven Churches
If the local church is the hope of the world… then we need more local churches. As I write this, I’m a couple of hours away from teaching a lab at Saddleback Church’s Hope Renewed conference on Planting Purpose Driven Churches. I’m a huge believer in...
The Three Things We Do Together As a Church
Grace Hills is a simple, purpose driven church. That means that we try to do what we’re told to do by Jesus, and little else. There is plenty of debate today about what a local church ought to look like, with plenty of criticism directed at large churches, in...
What to Do When Your Church Seems to Be Dying
No church leader I know wants to see another church close its doors. We need every local church, now more than ever, if we’re going to fulfill the Great Commission as soon as possible. I’m a Baptist who still believes in the perpetuity of biblical, local...When Things Get Real in a Church Plant
A snapshot taken in our first official “second” service, 1/19/2014. I am humbled! Today marked the 2nd anniversary of our launch as Grace Hills Church. Today, we also launched a second morning worship service – something I’ll write about later....
Let's Make Disciples of All the Nations… Today!
Jesus told us plainly, don’t talk about a harvest happening someday. Look at the fields that are white for the harvest today. As long as we see the Great Commission as some far off, unreachable goal, we will remain far off from reaching our goal. Earlier today,...
Creating Excellence With a Tiny Budget
When we began planting Grace Hills, we didn’t have the quarter of a million dollars that some plants in America start out with. We had way less than that in fact, so we had to figure out how to hack some things together, and I’m convinced it’s made...
Planting Churches and Popping Bubbles
When we started planting Grace Hills Church, we moved fast. We had our first public information meeting in July of 2011 and launched in January of 2012. Some planting strategists would make the assumption that we were all about getting to the weekend show and not...
Andy Stanley: The Church Can Be Deep and Wide
A little over a year ago, Angie and I started planting Grace Hills Church in northwest Arkansas, and one of our biggest hopes is that it’s a church that unchurched people love to attend. So Andy Stanley’s newest book, Deep & Wide: Creating Churches...
The Church Planting Journey Is Rather Personal
According to Brian and Amy Bloye, the two toughest jobs in the world are raising kids, and raising a church. And both tasks are deeply personal. I’m a better church planter for having read It’s Personal. It’s now one of the books I’ll be...Hi. I’m Brandon.
I’m the Lead Pastor of Grace Hills Church in Bentonville, Arkansas, which my wife, Angie, and I planted in 2012. I’ve been blogging here since 2004. I formerly served as a Pastor at Saddleback Church and was the Editor and Online Community Facilitator for Pastors.com and Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox. I wrote a book called Rewired, about how churches can use social media to spread the gospel.