Friday's Catch: Emerging Adults and the Church and More

Emerging Adults and the Church: Is There Really an Exodus?

Are emerging adults are leaving their faith behind? We are hosting a conference to explore this question. Read More

This Is Not a Real Church

How much can you strip away and still have a real church? If we were to apply Ockham’s Razor to church, what would be left standing? Read More

Child Abuse: Predator-Proof Your Organization

Children are vulnerable! That’s why as children’s ministry leaders you have the responsibility of doing all you can to protect those in your care. It’s a big task, but up-to-date information and suggestions can help assist your organization reduce risk and increase child safety.

Predators—individuals who become involved in a church in order to gain access to its children—are not only people from whom a church must protect its children. A church must also protect its children from church leaders, church members, and others who did not become involved in the church with the intention of abusing its children but succumb to the temptation to engage in sexual activity with a preteen or adolescent youngster or even a younger child.

Children who have been sexually abused may also become sexually precocious and consequently are highly susceptible to being victimized again. Adults may misinterpret their words and actions because their past abuse has conditioned these children to relate sexually to adults. A church needs to create a safe environment for these children as well as those who have not been previously abused.

Children who have received inadequate nurturing or otherwise have been emotionally neglected are also highly susceptible to victimization.

How ‘No Creed But the Bible’ Subverts the Bible

No creed but the Bible’ doesn’t even meet the Bible’s own doctrinal expectation. Read More

Why Men Like Me Shouldn’t Be Pastors

Why responding to the scourge of pastoral malpractice in evangelicalism starts in the pulpit itself. Read More

Pastoral Transition: 7 Signs It May Be The Right Time To Let Go

Watching someone else build on the foundation you’ve helped establish may be the most fulfilling part of life and ministry. Read More

4 Ways to be Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak

Listening is an active process. If we don’t actively listen to others, we can create unneeded tension. By listening quickly and speaking slowly, relationships grow, trust develops, and ministry moves forward. Read More

The Perfect Sound Check

Although there are probably several ways to perform an efficient sound check, I’ll walk you though the process I have settled into after ten years of leading worship. Read More

Barna: Over Half of Churchgoers Don’t Know the Great Commission

A major finding from Barna’s Translating the Great Commission report, produced in partnership with Seed Company, is that more than half of U.S. churchgoers have not heard of the Great Commission. Additionally, even when presented with a list of passages, 37 percent don’t recognize which well-known passage typically goes by this name. Read More

I do not remember when I first heard or read the term “the Great Commission.” The rector of the church that I attended as a teenager had been a missionary in the Philippines and I listened to his sermons rather than leaving with the other youngsters who went to Sunday school during the sermon. The only time I went to Sunday school was to teach a class of fourth graders. My mother and my grandparents used to talk about the ways they had supported missions. My mother had been friends with a number of girls and young women at her grammar school and her college who became missionaries. Her college was operated by the Church of England and trained missionaries as well as teachers.

In the 1980s and 1990s I frequented the New Orleans Baptist seminary book store as well as St. Philips’ Episcopal Church book store. Both bookstores were stocked with books on missions and evangelism and I purchased and read a good number of them. The rector of St. Philips’ at that time was a Church of England evangelical.

I am not surprised at Barna’s findings. The Great Commission was not a topic that I regularly heard preached in the Episcopal Church in those years. The 1990s were declared a Decade of Evangelism but from what I gather a lot of Episcopal priests treated it as a joke. The priests in the deanery to which my church belonged showed no interest in evangelism, including my vicar, later rector. During the 15 years that I served as the senior lay reader of that church, it reached only one person who had never attended a church in her life.