Tag Archive - church

Lewis Fellows: Kansas City or Bust

This past week was crazy.  I didn’t have any time to blog or tweet. I traveled to Kansas City, MO with the Lewis Fellows and spent some time with pastors of dynamic churches.  When I returned to New York, I went back to the airport to welcome Gary Long, our retreat speaker.  Saturday the church held our fall retreat on vision – an excellent time.  Sunday was worship.  As you can see, it was a pretty full couple of days.

I want to briefly share with you my Lewis Fellows experience.  Tuesday, October 19 we visited Saint Andrew Christian Church (www.sacchome.org) and had a conversation with Senior Pastor Rev. Holly McKissick.  Saint Andrew Christian Church is a Disciples of Christ church.  Check out the church below:

As you can see, it looks more like a market than a church.  Such a welcoming property and building.  The church is only 20 years old and Holly is the founding pastor.  Below, Holly is standing and we are meeting in the sanctuary.  I loved this sanctuary.  The building is only about 12 years old.

Holly comes out of the Southern Baptist tradition, but was ordained in the Disciples of Christ church.  The sanctuary is welcoming and seating is structured in a “U”.  Holly’s take on leadership was interesting.  She talked about making mistakes, as all pastors do, but learning from them.  She was honest and candid about her leadership and ministry.

Below is a pic of the cross that hangs in the sanctuary:

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Atheists Know More about Religion

In a recent Pew Religious study, atheists scored highest on a  survey asking basic questions regarding religion.  Even more surprising is the fact that some answered questions incorrectly when it came to facts about their own faith. The New York Times reports that on average respondents answered half of the questions incorrectly.

Atheists and agnostics scored the highest out of all respondents.  Jews and Mormons scored the highest out of all religious groups. White Protestant Christians scored in the middle range.

How could Atheists out score all other religious groups in this simple religious test?  It had to be the questions.  The questions were too hard, right?  Well, there were some basic questions like, “Where was Jesus born?” “Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation?” “Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt?”  The respondents answered in multiple choice form.

What conclusion can we reach about this study?  Atheists know more about religion?

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Age Segregation in Church

In the last 30 years, age-segmented worship was an unforeseen effect of the contemporary worship movement within Christianity.  What has developed in many (not all) churches are two worship services.  A traditional service with older adults and a commentary service with younger adults.  This results into a type of age segregation in congregations. Several blogs and Christian news organizations have slowly noticed this trend. Recently, Tullian Tchividjian the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, TN (a very large church) ended years of age-segmented worship in his church.

Tchividjian comments on merging the two worship styles into one:

The primary reason, though, that stylistic segregation in worship shrinks our souls is because it prevents us from knowing God deeply. The only way to know him deeply is to have many different types of Christian people in your life, since each person will help to reveal a part of God that you can’t see by yourself. This means the great tragedy of segregation isn’t so much that we see less of each other but that in separating from each other we see less of God. All of us need other lights than our own to see more of his myriad facets.

Will we see a reversal of age segregation in  worship services in churches in the United States?

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How to Throw Away a Bible

I’m back!  After a short sabbatical for the month of August, I’m ready to start blogging again.  The manuscript for my book continues.

After some saints of my church decided to clear out our Sunday School storage area (who wants to do that job?), an unusual question was posed. “What do we do with damaged Bibles?” I was not quite sure how to answer the question.  I figured we could donate the Bibles to Salvation Army or another religious non-profit.

After the damaged Bibles sat in a box outside of my office for a week, another church member asked about the Bibles.  I told her that we were going to donate the Holy books.  She picked up one of the Bibles and pages started fall out.  “We are going to donate these?” The look on her face told me that these Bibles were not worthy to give to anyone and she was right. How can you tell others about Christ when the end of the book of Luke is missing?

How do you throw away a Bible?  That question just seems wrong.  I believe the proper question is, “How do you properly dispose of damaged Bibles?” You cannot just burn them.  I think. That just evokes images of Nazi Germany and book burning.  A nutty pastor recently created a controversial event, “Burn a Koran Day.”  Not the route we want to go here folks.

After some research, I discovered the answer to the question, “How do you properly dispose of damaged Bibles? The answer is:

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What Would Jesus Wear?

Hmmm... I think I'll wear my "Jesus is my homeboy" shirt today.

Many of us have heard of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) but how about WWJW (What Would Jesus Wear?)  Check out this actual toy , on the right, that is sold in stores.  I first thought this was a joke, but then I saw that you can buy this doll action figure for about $15.  Based on this action figure, Jesus would wear just about anything.  Including a 80′s boom box stereo (look close in the back ground)  I’m glad to see a cross is there.  I think.

Some may see this as sacrilegious, but I think it is a point of reference for commentary in our culture.  No longer is Jesus off limits from commercialization.  Sure “Christian” businesses make money of Jesus related digs, but now we see secular businesses making money off Jesus’ likeness. Trademark infringement anyone?

The likeness of Jesus and his apparel may not seem critically important to the average person.  Christ spoke a few times about clothing, but never clear on what to wear.  There are references to sharing clothing and being watchful of the Pharisees wearing their religious clothing in order to be seen.

Should we be concerned with what we wear?

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Shocker: Young Adults Want 'Religion'

In churches, we often hear the warning giving to youth off to college, “You’ll lose your faith in college.”  All those competing ideas about religion, philosophy, and knowledge working against everything a church has built up!  I once had an old timer in my home church tell me right before I left for seminary, “Be careful, you can lose your faith in seminary!” Is there something about education and youth that are dangerous?  Sordid stories of youth going wild in early adulthood often lead people to think that young people want nothing to do with church, God, religion or faith.

In a surprising new study, we have learned that young adults/youth actually want a life of faith and religious practices.  Duke Divinity’s Faith and Leadership blog sums up the study:

In the National Study of Youth and Religion, 72 percent of young adults said they had positive feelings about the religious tradition in which they were raised. And nearly half of the young adults in the religion panel study said they would like to attend worship services more often.

The fact that most young people have “positive feelings” towards their religious tradition and nearly half of respondents want to go to church more, should tell us something about Generation Y.

So, how can churches reach these young people?

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Why No One Likes Evangelism

Over the years, I have encountered many Christians who do not feel comfortable with evangelism.  Loosely, evangelism is the process in which Christians seek to convert or share the Gospel of Christ to others.  When you say the word “evangelism” at a church meeting, thoughts of door knocking, Bible tracks, and street preaching come to mind.

Guy Kent at the Good Preacher/Homiletical Hot Tub blog, posted a funny telling of a Charlie Brown cartoon:

A Charlie Brown cartoon once had Lucy proclaiming to Charlie Brown, “I would make a good evangelist.”

Charlie Brown responds, “And why do you think that?”

“Well, I convinced the boy who sits behind me in school that my religion is better than his religion.”

Now Charlie Brown is intrigued. “How did you do that?”

Lucy tells him, “I hit him over the head with my lunch box!”

The “hit’em over the head” approach is often seen as the worst example of evangelism.   These days, post modernity has made us shy about sharing our faith.  Anyone who holds to an absolute truth is a nut or is too rigid.  Isn’t there a better way?

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Post Christian Europe: Not Dead

This past Sunday, we had the wonderful opportunity to have Pieter and Nora Kalkman visit us and share about their ministry in Europe. They spoke about their work in eastern Europe and their challenges in “post Christian” Europe.  Nora and Pieter are based in Prague, Czech Republic where they serve through International Ministries as liaison and volunteer coordinators with the European Baptist Federation (EBF). They match the skills and interests of short term mission volunteers from the United States and Puerto Rico with the needs of more than 50 Baptist unions that are part of the EBF.

Some interesting information they shared:

  • There are only 2.4% Bible believing Christians in Europe, making this is a priority mission field.
  • Georgian Baptist pastors wear similar liturgical vestments that Orthodox priests wear because of the historical Eastern Orthodox presence in that region.
  • In some countries, only 3% of the population go to any type of “church.”
  • There are a variety of needs to do mission work. Week trips, short term, and long term ministry opportunities can be found here.

So if there only 2.4% “Bible believing Christians” living in Europe, we have to ask the question: Is Christianity dead in Europe?

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In Front of the Church

Video blog thoughts…

Pentecost 3C

Small Churches Are The Next Big Thing

Brandon J. O’Brien at Christianity Today’s Out of Ur blog, has a really interesting thought about the future of small churches.  The perception is that small churches are dying and are even the reason why Christianity is waning. However, O’Brien pulls from a number of sources to explain why the small church might be the next big movement:

In a conversation last week about the virtues of small churches, a pastor friend of mine, Chuck Warnock, quoted a passage from John Zogby’s 2008 book The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House). Zogby prophesies that “The church of the future will be a bungalow on Main Street, not a megastructure in a sea of parking spaces. It’s intimacy of experience that people long for, not production values.”

On the face of it, I couldn’t be more pleased with that prediction. I’ve pastored two small congregations and am now a member and deacon in another, where my wife serves on staff. My experience with these churches has led me to believe that small congregations are uniquely positioned to carry the gospel into the world in the 21st century. Few things would make me happier than if the “next big thing” in Christian ministry conversations was the small church.

Interesting take.  Certainly, the Emergent Movement has taught us that small churches can do big things and reach people previously thought to be “unreachable.”  Also, “house churches” have been known to start mega churches because of their simplicity and small community.

O’Brien also says there is a danger involved with small churches:

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