matthewmthomas.com

Beginning with the Pastor and a core group of disciples, personal discipleship to Christ spawns Vision.

Vision spawns groups of disciples and conflict within congregational systems in areas that are not discipleship-oriented.

Conflict leads to maturity or destruction.

Discipleship flows from discipler to disciples, from leader to leaders to led, who then become leaders.

Transformation begins in small groups, flows to worship, flows to leadership, flows to congregation, flows to finances, flows to growth.

At least in my experience.

Other thoughts?

Since February 2003, I’ve had a weblog.  Based upon a very nerdy joke, I called it M Squared T.  Real nerds will tell you that my initials, MMT, mathematically reduce to M^2 (squared) T.  Unfortunately, two things conspired against the M Squared T blog: first, people couldn’t spell the durn URL.  Not that I blame them.  Until it became automatic, I would typo my own URL regularly.  www.msquaredt.com was just a little much.

Second, in 2005, I became the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Warren, Ohio.  Now, my blog audience moved from my friends, family, and other bloggers to people who were in my congregation.  As that situation became increasingly conflict-ridden, it seemed best to shut down the blog to ease some of the tensions. 

Nevertheless, I find it important to be a contributing voice in the work of God that is emerging these days, and I feel it is necessary to create two blogs - one for the friends, family and fellow nerds, and one for my work as a professional church leader.  I may even make more blogs… you never know. 

I have added Google’s AdSense ads to this site in order to (at least) cover its costs.  In agreement with Google’s terms of service, that’s all I have to say about that. :) 

Enjoy the blogs.