Church & Culture
It’s getting harder to be nice anymore.
I have friends on all sides of virtually every political, theological and philosophical issue. People with whom I have significant disagreements on some subjects, yet find common ground on others.
But it’s becoming difficult ...
For generations, churches were the center of community life in many towns.
Want to know what time it is? Listen for the chimes from the Lutheran church steeple.
Going to the store? Turn left at the Baptist church.
Bored on a Sunday night? Check out the revival at the Pentecostal ...
Most of what we do in the pastorate makes no logical sense.
At least not in the here and now.
We invest in people who fail us over and over again. We pray, counsel, cry, study, preach, give and sacrifice – and often we wonder what good it all does.
Then we do it again.
Why?
Not everything is scalable.
Church growth is. But not every aspect of church health is.
Not only is bigger not always better, in some cases pushing for numerical growth can actually be harmful to the mission of a local church.
Scalability Is Not Universal
There are a lot of great, ...
There’s a lot that’s wrong with the church today.
Over and over, I see similar complaints:
- “The church today is compromised!”
- “The modern church is about entertainment!”
- “The contemporary church is more about personalities than about Jesus!”
The world is changing. Fast.
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I see a lot of good changes along with the bad ones, but no matter how you see it, change is hard.
And the extreme amount of change we’re experiencing now is overwhelming.
It’s especially challenging when ...
There’s a lot about the gospel message that is not user-friendly.
Take up your cross. Love your enemies. Put God’s will ahead of my own.
But getting to that message shouldn’t be as hard as many churches often make it.
This lesson was reinforced for me recently ...
Most of the world’s historic victories happened in one simple, yet brutal way – the winner was better at killing than the loser was.
Death wins. As long as it’s your death, not mine.
One of the many reasons I follow Jesus is that his victory on the cross was ...
There are two ways for a local church to reach more people.
Advertising or evangelism.
And they are not the same thing.
There’s nothing wrong with advertising, per se. Using social media, print ads, handouts or other means to let people know about your church or its events ...
There are only two forms of the church that ultimately matter.
The universal church and the local church.
Everything else is an add-on. Including buildings, furniture, styles of music, types of preaching, curriculum, and the subject of today’s article, denominations.
I’m ...
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