Thursday's Catch: Online Services, Biblical Literacy, and More

Back in the Church Building? Your Livestream Service Still Matters After reopening their building and relaunching their in-person churches, a number of churches have scaled back and even discontinued their online services. This is short-sighted. Only a few churches are seeing the kind of attendance that they had before the pandemic. People are not convinced that attending church is safe. They read about churches that have disregarded recommended safety measures and in which church services and other gatherings have become super-spreader events. The recent Supreme court ruling against New York's restrictions will not inspire confidence that places of worship are safe and religious organization will put their safety first. While this ruling may be seen as a victory against perceived government overreach, the ruling can also been seen as a license for further recklessness that endangers the public.

3 Strategies for Cultivating a Biblically Literate Church "The more our people neglect their Bibles the less they will know, obey, and enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ. Less Bible means the body of Christ embodies him less faithfully, less joyfully, and less effectively." They will particularly met Jesus in the Gospels. Too many of today's churches are not embodying Jesus at all. They are becoming the body of someone else, not Jesus.

Scriptureless Worship While scriptureless worship may not be as much of a problem for Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Roman Catholic as it is for Baptists, Methodist, and other Christians whose worship services do not follow a set pattern that includes the reading of Scripture. However, they would benefit from reading this article too.

Ten Worship Leading Essentials at Christmas Time This article was written well before the COVID-19 pandemic but it does offer some helpful advice for planning Christmas services, whether online or in-person with restrictions on the number of attendees, pre-registration, face masks, social distancing, and other safety measures. Whatever the season we should put the safety of the congregation and the community first. It is better to err on the side of caution than to cause a lot of pain.

Creating Online Content for Families What a great idea--online content that is geared to parents and their kids to watch together and which will help them grow spiritually together.