I have tried to apply the discipline of simplicity in my personal life. We have a simple home, used cars, and “antique furniture” that was once new but has aged along with us. So when I found a book applying the principle of simplicity to the church, it certainly caught my interest. It was Deve Browing’s Deliberate Simplicity – How the Church Does More by Doing Less.

One of the key services that UBA provides to churches is contextual understanding about the city in which we live. UBA staff do this through research, demographics, conducting church surveys, or interpreting outside data points. We’re regularly asked questions about how current our data are and how it actually affects churches. I’m happy to report there is a new answer to these questions. UBA has been asked to be one of the pilot associations for a brand new national research project that has direct implications for you and your church.

I was fresh off the boat from two years of mission work when I first heard of diaspora missions. I joined a church that had committed to engaging the West African population nearby and was soon neck-deep in Gambian and Ivorian communities. In spite of my mission experience, this work was harder than I anticipated. But if I can do it, so can you. And so can anyone else in your church.

This come-and-see model of ministry we’ve developed over the past 100 years has produced several generations of Christians who assume church is about them, for them, and because of them. So they shop around.

But what if we pastors are only sleeping in the bed we’ve made for ourselves? What if we have a consumer-driven Christian culture because we’ve been selling a product instead of embodying a mission?

I once saw a comment by Jon Tyson—pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Manhattan—regarding the prodigious creative output of our culture. His words struck me as truthful. "So much content; so little wisdom."

Most Americans, it strikes me, are content with cleverness and snark. And, in our ever-increasing desire to appear more nonchalant and funny, something is lost. That something, it seems to me, is wisdom.

Nearly 70.8 million people were forcibly displaced in 2018. Refugees are forced to leave their homes, their friends and often their family, and everything they know because of threats, violence, inability to survive, or persecution. When a person has spent weeks, months, or most often years in survival mode, it can be difficult to know what thriving can look like, especially in a new country, with a new language, operating in a new culture. There are simple ways that we can help a refugee thrive. Here are ten easy ways that you can help a refugee thrive, not just survive.

God uses his people to call and clarify calling for the next generation of leaders.

Church renewal can happen. It should come as no surprise to anyone that a majority of churches in North America are plateaued or declining. We've all heard the statistics. We've seen the reports. In fact, you may attend, or even pastor, one of those churches. If so, I want to give you some hope: church renewal can happen. That's why we're announcing a partnership with Revitalize Network to bring significant tools and resources to UBA churches that desire to walk a path toward renewal.

The majority of us who are involved with a local church know someone who has lived or currently lives on the mission field. On any given Sunday, we may hear about how God used a missionary’s obedience or a quick plug or through an introduction from the stage if they happen to be in town. Their work may be somewhat familiar to us yet still distant enough from the details to leave them feeling vaguely unknown. This can make catching up with a missionary friend over coffee quite uncomfortable or even awkward at times. But here are some helpful things to remember.

Our new office hours will be 8am-4pm Monday-Thursday with Fridays in the Field. Here’s why.