Church & Culture
All my life I’ve heard preachers talk about a coming worldwide revival.
But it’s never happened.
There have been pockets of excitement. From the Jesus Movement of the 1970s to local spiritual outbreaks today. Along with controversy over their genuineness and effectiveness. ...
Apparently the church is losing the culture wars.
We must be. My Facebook feed says so. And Facebook never lies, right?
Today it’s about bathrooms. Tomorrow it will be something else.
Each issue is presented as ‘The Most Important Issue of Our Time!’ Until the ...
Millennials are a mystery. Especially if you’re a Baby Boomer like me.
In the Boomer era it was not unusual for over one-third of the nation to be watching the same TV show. During the day, up to half the neighborhood listened to the same radio station on their drive home. ...
It sounds so inviting and innocent.
“Sit back, relax and enjoy the service.”
But that may be one of the most dangerous sentences regularly uttered in church.
I expect promises of great customer service in a restaurant, an airplane or a store. But the idea that church ...
I don’t care if the church is culturally relevant.
No, I don’t want us to wallow in some old-time, glory days that probably never were. But cultural relevance is not the answer.
As I wrote in Six Church-and-Culture Issues I Don't Care About Any More, it’s ...
The title of today’s post comes from something I read on a friend’s Facebook timeline last week. The parentheses are mine.
Before I explain why I used such a controversial comment as a blog post title, I’d like to expand on it.
You can also unfriend me if you're ...
Just about every day a blog post or video comes across my path that claims to say ‘what no one else has the guts to say.’
That claim is usually followed by an angry tirade of extremist and/or conspiracy-theory rhetoric that we’ve all heard a thousand times before. ...
We're in love with the spectacular. Superhero movies, bigger buildings, viral videos and over-the-top personalities.
It’s the same in a lot of our churches.
We've become very noisy and personality-driven in our presentation of the gospel.
People who don't go to church don't want to go to church.
For folks like me, who love going to church, that's hard to wrap our heads and hearts around. Because of that, we sometimes get our priorities mixed up.
When people get to know Jesus, church attendance is a ...
What are people looking for in a church?
Pastors ask this question regularly – and we should. But too often, I think we miss the mark entirely.
Recently, I was with a group of ministers sharing new ideas. Much of our discussion centered on issues like the quality and volume ...
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