missional – Todd Engstrom

Should I Plant a Church?

Church planting is a particular calling, not a general one, and three questions test it: internal desire, external confirmation, and opportunity. This is the frame I taught in a workshop with The Equipping Group, and it includes what to do when only one or two of the three hold. Refusing the calling you do not…

When is a Group a Church?

Church planting lives in long seasons of in between, where it is unclear whether you are forming a group or shepherding a church. Clarity does not rush that process, it gives it direction and a trajectory, so this is the minimum I think has to be true before a group is a church.

2025 in Review

Three words kept rising to the surface as I looked back over the year: striving, selling, serving. More of a posture than a plan, and the thread running through them is that planning has begun to feel less like control and more like trust.

Re-Formation: How is God Reshaping the Church Today?

What if we thought of reformation less as a revolution and more as a re-formation, the same materials molded differently for a new season? Watching five years of church movement in Austin, I do not think we are seeing decline or sheep swapping. Divine redistribution is often how the mission advances.

Extra Ordinary Prayer

Praying with groups across Austin these last weeks, I have found embers of the Spirit’s presence but not yet a fire. Extraordinary prayer is just extra ordinary, so whatever is ordinary for you, add something extra. It is not a destination, it is a direction.

Forerunning, Not Competing

Ministry conversation slides too easily into who is growing fastest and reaching widest, and I do not want to play that game. A forerunner goes down the course first, not to compete but to test the ground and prepare the way. It is quiet work, but it matters deeply, and like Paul I would rather…

Thinking Out Loud: Groundbreaking

Groundbreaking ceremonies have always struck me as funny, a circle of people in nice suits and hard hats shoveling a bit of dirt. But when we launched the Greater Austin Mission Society it was a good meeting and not much else, and I found I still wanted some way to mark it.