church growth
What to do with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
Several days ago some friends of mine were stuck in a car on the way home from a meeting. As usually happens when we get together, our conversation turned toward church life, dwindling volunteers and the problems we all face as pastors to communicate spiritual things in a hectic, overworked and sometimes deaf world. We [...]
Saving Tomorrow Today
In their book A Faith of Their Own: Stability and Change in the Religiosity of America’s Adolescents (Oxford University Press, 2011), the authors follow up with 2,530 young people, age 16 to 21, surveyed about their faith and religious practices at two points in time. The authors identified five types of religious identity among these [...]
Define Church
I know that there are hundreds of different ways to describe the church as it exists today, some good, some not so good. This ambiguity leaves many confused and struggling to create a definition all their own, often with disastrous consequences. I though I would give several definitions a try. See which one describes you best and then take a stab [...]
Who Needs Church? part 2
There seems to be a movement these days to separate spirituality from community. As if a personal, private encounter Christ is better than dealing with others at church. Nothing could be further from the truth. We were made to live in community, to practice the skills of forgiveness, grace and love and in the process [...]
Who Needs Church? part 1
Church is born out of forgiveness, grace and love. Not just flowing from Jesus to you, but from you into others! The Church then is a conduit, an overlap of Heaven and Earth in which the prayer “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven” is fulfilled, at least temporarily. Is this conduit [...]
2012 New Year Blessings
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson As we step into the flow of God’s story, I feel there is a growing excitement that God is moving us, shaping and equipping us to live beyond the ordinary. We are, after [...]
A Year for Reconciliation
What is our task in this world as children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus? Our task is reconciliation. Wherever we go we see divisions among people – in families, communities, cities, countries, and continents. All these divisions are tragic reflections of our separation from God. The truth that all people belong together [...]
Is Your Church Dangerous?
“Nothing dangerous is happening here.” Those who hold this belief about God and church have made themselves irrelevant to all things spiritual because they’ve swallowed the Enemy’s first line of attack: “I don’t exist.” You can’t and won’t fight a battle you don’t think exists. This is right out of The Screwtape Letters, where Lewis [...]
Does Sin Still Matter
“We fear the search for who we are. Perhaps because we’re afraid that having located our true souls, we might not like ourselves that much. So, we shrink to step across the threshold to our inner selves and invite God in. … But no matter how we love the busy world of our relationships, the [...]
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