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small churches

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FREE EthicsDaily.com netcast for small churches

Tomorrow, EthicsDaily.com will host a free netcast on their website focusing on small-church expectations of pastors, avoiding burnout in the small-church pastorate, and advice for those ministers working in a small-church environment. The streaming netcast  Oct. 22 begins at 11 a.m. ET.

Zach Dawes, former small-church pastor and now managing editor of EthicsDaily.com, and Chuck Warnock, pastor of Chatham Baptist Church in Chatham, Va., will join EthicsDaily.com’s media producer, Cliff Vaughn, online for the conversation. Using  Google Hangouts, EthicsDaily.com will broadcast live on their site.

Anyone can watch the netcast on the main page of EthicsDaily.com, in the video hub (near the bottom-right of the page). After the netcast, the content will be available as a recorded video.

Ethics Daily now features 60 Skype interviews on their Vimeo channel. The expert discussions feature topics like prison ministry, beauty pageants, the Korean church, Thomas Jefferson, the church and technology, and much more.

 

blog, Christianity

Real Preachers of L.A. – Yes, for real

As if we didn’t need another “Real (fill in the blank) of (fill in the blank)” reality show, the Oxygen Network premiered “Real Preachers of L.A.“. I suppose it was only a matter of time that preachers/ministers would get their own reality show since everyone from gold miners to Kevin Hart has one.

What shall I say about this show and it’s premise? Well, for one it is entertainment. No producer would bring a reality show to TV if it wasn’t controversial. I can’t imagine a show with a bunch of preachers in middle America going to air – unless they were zombie preachers!

Kate Bower at the CNN Belief blog describes it as:

a chaotic mix of prayer, “house porn,” and neatly orchestrated dust-ups between senior pastors and their “first ladies.” In some ways, the combination of the prosperity gospel with the “Real Housewives” format is a match made in Oprah-produced heaven. Men of the cloth cruise Southern California in lavish cars weighed down by their gold watches and tiny dogs.

The show centers around a group of mega church well to do hipster preachers with family, cars, parties, and other celebrities. The display of semi-lavish living is opening flaunted on the show. Ron Gibson, one of the show’s preachers, explains the lavish living as:

“P. Diddy, Jay Z. They’re not the only ones who should be driving Ferraris and living in large houses.”

Much of the show’s under current is a popular and controversial Christian movement known as Prosperity Gospel or Prosperity Theology. The Jimmy Swaggers and Jim Bakers of the world brought this movement to television. Basically, the thinking goes, if you are faithful and give abundantly to a church or ministry, God will bless you with wealth and happiness. In turn, preachers get to live in multiple houses and live a lifestyle fit for King Solomon.

Unfortunately, shows like this reinforce a stereotype of preachers who are greedy and profit from their ministry. These ministers exist but the vast majority of ministers don’t make anywhere need the type of money the “Real Preachers of L.A.” are making. Many pastors small churches and are bivocational.

So, there you have it. You judge if these Real Preachers of L.A. are the real deal or just all show.

Churches

Small Churches Are The Next Big Thing

small church

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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