...in the hopes of encouraging you and your team, here are some rather invisible things you’re doing really well right now as you’re leading.
Creating Church Experiences Worth Experiencing
Welcome to the Experience Economy. Actually, we’ve been living in it for a decade or two, even if you and I haven’t realized it. Most of us are old enough to remember the previous service economy. The economic progression away from the service economy has been evolving for quite some time and has real implications for your church. Let’s chat for a minute about this economic progression to better understand how it affects our churches.
How To Design Successful Goals For Your Worship Ministry
Are your worship ministry goals designed for success?
Can the Layperson Understand the Bible for Themselves?
Can’t a ‘regular,’ untrained believer connect the dots? What about ‘ordinary’ believers understanding the text? Reading the Bible isn’t rocket science. Though it is far more important. Aren’t we actually discouraging people from getting into God’s word?
Greg Stier shares 4 key principles to help your teenagers engage lovingly, biblically, and boldly around LGBTQ issues.
Intergenerational Ministry: Strive for Understanding, Connectivity
For churches of all sizes, intergenerational ministry is a necessary and worthwhile undertaking.
How to Stay Open-Handed & Generous as a Family
...here are three ways that your family can stay open-handed during the upcoming seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas....
Aunts and Uncles, Don’t Overlook Your Calling
Parents may have chief responsibility, but they don’t teach their children about God alone.
Multiplying and Planting New Small Groups
Multiplying a group or sending members out to start a new one still aren’t easy or simplistic endeavors. But this process has enabled dozens of fruitful multiplications and new groups.
13 Places to Discover New Group Leaders
Looking for group leaders in your church can be like looking for Waldo. We know they’re out there, but they’re not always instantly recognizable.
With Friendship in Decline, Belonging Is a Powerful Apologetic
“How to Help Our Neighbors Meet Jesus” is a series that asks notable thinkers and theologians to answer this question: “What is the most important thing the church must do right now to help our neighbors trust Jesus for their salvation?”
Gospel-Patterned Friendship
...what begins as easy and natural as kids somehow becomes murky and difficult with age. Sure, we have acquaintances all around us. Coworkers and neighbors, even fellow church members, with whom we exchange pleasantries, inquire about the other’s kids, and talk about our vacation plans. But a true friendship—a relationship that goes deeper than any of that and takes on the form of true life-sharing—that’s rare. It’s also difficult.
25 Outstanding Discipleship Resources
Every pastor (and every church) benefits from access to excellent discipleship resources. We’ve gathered some vintage discipleship resources that may not turn up on the first page of a Google search. Perhaps this collection of 25 discipleship resources could become your reading/viewing list for the next few months?
Anglican Attendance Strongly Rebounds
Anglican congregations in the United States, Canada and Mexico are reporting a significant attendance increase of 17,228 persons following a widespread return to regular worship services post-COVID. The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is also reporting modest growth in both membership and total number of churches in 2022.
What I have noticed is that this rebound is occurring primarily in regions in which church attendance is still valued by a large segment of the population and where the many Methodist churches have disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church over fears of that denomination taking a more permissive stance on same sex marriage and the ordination of sexual active members of the LGBT+ segment of the population. These factors to my mind call for a careful analysis of who comprises this rebound.
Church attendance has its limitations as a statistical measure. It does not show whether a particular individual counted is a full-fledged disciple of Jesus Christ but only that they go to church. It does not measure the impact that a church has on its community nor the size of the church's foot print in the community. A church can have a large attendance but produce few disciples who are capable of replicating themselves and making more disciples.
Unitarian Universalists elect first woman of color, openly queer presidentOne consequently cannot assume because a church has a lot of warm bodies in its pews that that it is effectively making disciples and those warm bodies are full-fledged disciples of Jesus Christ.
A womanist theologian, ethicist and minister, the Rev. Sofía Betancourt previously served as interim co-president of the UUA in 2017.
No comments:
Post a Comment