Monday's Catch: 'Practical Ways to Celebrate Kingdom Diversity' And More

Practical Ways to Celebrate Kingdom Diversity

Ideas to help individuals, families, and churches build and celebrate authentic community with people from different backgrounds.

How to Know if Your Leadership Is Abusive
A man may be a good preacher, and may be good in a variety of pastoral situations, but the key issue here is “How does he handle disagreement with his vision or viewpoint, or how does he handle people when they aren’t where he would like them to be?”

How Our Leadership Weakness Becomes Strength With God
A weakness or limitation is different than being a weak person or a limited leader. It’s an acknowledgement of your humanity and gives you clues to how God wants to use you.

Tracking the Trends in Worship 

Welcomed or not, the contemporary music-centered approach to worship that has been both dominant and effective in most large and megachurch worship services is being challenged. This challenge, which has been slowly growing over the past decade, is coming from the same age-group that once pioneered praise bands and raising hands: Teens and young adults are challenging the trends in worship.

I am inclined to be skeptical of that what Tom Lawson is seeing is the development of a trend. As he admits, the sample is small--too small to identify an emerging trend. I have also read a number of articles giving anecdotal evidence of what the author perceived as a trend among young people toward liturgical worship, etc., but have proved to be wishful thinking on their part. A trend away from what as been described as "worshiptainment" is in my opinion desirable but whether Tom Lawson is seeing such a trend is a different matter. "Time will tell," as the saying goes.

Dances with Calendars" 4 Tips for Calendering Your Small Groups
There is no other activity that’s good for “absolutely nothing” like calendaring. But as small group ministry leaders who are often thinking about late-summer recruiting, fall-launches, winter-holiday breaks, leader-training, etc. – mapping out a calendar with our teams is usually something we are doing and re-doing throughout the year.

Parishioners heartbroken after vandals desecrate church in Northwest Texas 

Episcopalians in Amarillo, Texas, say they are heartbroken after vandals desecrated St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. A liturgy is planned to restore the worship space and consecrated objects to sacred use.

The vandalizing of places of worship has bee on the increae. Such acts are not just an attack on one faith community. They are an attack on all faith communities regardless of the faith tradition.

Archbishop of Canterbury’s coronation sermon
For those who may be interested here is the text of the sermon which the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby delivered at the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla on May 6 in Westminster Abbey.