Michael J. Rubino

@bradleybrisco Interesting. Going to meditate on this for a minute. Thanks @bradleybrisco

A gospel-centered faith can subtly create "believers" who don't follow Jesus, while a Jesus-centered faith creates disciples who embody His life. The difference isn't just theological—it's the difference between a movement of followers and a system of religious consumers.

According to @GlenScrivener, author of The Air We Breathe (my pick for the best nonfiction book I read in 2024), most of what we now consider to be self-evident human values were not so evident or common before Jesus. karlvaters.com/glen-scrivener…

I was talking with a young pastor recently who said something that stopped me in my tracks: "Our church is dying, but they'd rather die than change." And there it was - the elephant that nobody wants to talk about. Let me put this plainly: Simply keeping your church the same as it was in 1963 isn't "preserving the faith." That's not tradition - that's nostalgia. And nostalgia makes a poor substitute for discipleship. Many of our churches that claim to be "standing firm" are actually in free fall. We've confused preserving the gospel with preserving our comfort zones. Meanwhile, our young people aren't leaving because they've rejected our theology - they're leaving because they can't find it beneath all our cultural preferences. What if our refusal to change anything isn't actually faithfulness? What if it's fear dressed up as conviction? You see, real conservation requires cultivation. A garden left "unchanged" doesn't stay pristine - it gets overrun. The same principle applies to our churches. When we mistake maintenance for mission, we're not protecting tradition; we're enabling erosion. Here's the uncomfortable truth: Some of our "we've always done it this way" churches haven't actually "always done it this way" at all. They've just forgotten why they started doing it in the first place. The early church turned the world upside down not by rigid adherence to customs, but by radical adherence to Christ. Maybe it's time we learned the difference. The gospel doesn't need protecting. It needs proclaiming. And sometimes, proclaiming it faithfully means changing everything except the message itself. Just something to think about next time we mistake our preferences for orthodoxy. - James Bell. Great word!

Sex outside of marriage. Striking insight from @TimKellerNYC. “Sex apart from marriage becomes a product we consume if we find someone attractive enough in quality and low enough in price. If the quality goes down or the cost goes up, we can walk away, because there is no covenant. But if sex comes only with the radical self-giving and whole-life commitment of marriage, that takes sex off the market, as it were, and makes it priceless.”

The Revitalize Roadmap: Getting Your Church on the Road to Greater Health a.co/d/5mCr6KJ #Amazon

Join us in welcoming our new SEND City Missionary to the team! His visionary leadership and kingdom heart is exactly what we need to raise up the next generation of church planters FROM the harvest, FOR the harvest! #ForTheCity #ChurchesPlantingChurchesEverywhereForEveryone

Available soon! #churchrevitalization

I sit down with @KarlVaters and believe me when I say that our conversation is FILLED with gold.  Comment PODCAST and I'll send you the link!

@TrevinWax Yes and quickly!

A friend last week was shocked to discover I’ve never seen any of the Godfather movies and told me I should rectify this at once. Is he right?

@DougLeslie Amen! What you believe always comes out in how you behave.

💯

No matter where you are in the church planting / sending process, NewChurches new website is for you!

Pursuing numbers has been seen as an essential aspect of discipleship. But it’s not. Sometimes it’s the greatest hindrance to discipleship. karlvaters.com/discipleship-f…

“God is more concerned with your character than your career. The chief question is not what does God want me to do, but who does God want me to be?” -@tonymerida #sngathering

Huge loss! Praying for his family

15 Powerful Quotes That Will Make You Think: 1.

This is so good by @JamesClear

Imagine telling someone who isn’t a basketball fan that this guy was the biggest trash talking psychopath to ever play in the NBA

Asking good questions is a superpower. 7 of the best questions I’ve encountered:

This will forever be one of the most insane game winners in NBA History. twitter.com/BleacherReport…

This is Josh Waitzkin He figured out the science of becoming a top performer in any field. CEOs, billionaires & elite athletes pay him millions to learn his techniques. Here's his superhuman performance protocol: