Thursday's Catch: '4 Ways to Make Your Church Safer' And More

Update: El Roi Haiti reports the safe release of American Christian nurse Alix Dorsainvil and her daughter held hostage in Port au Prince, Haiti.

4 Ways to Make Your Church Safer
With a variety of safety concerns, how can churches take the next step in providing a safer and more secure place of worship for congregants?

VOICES: Here's how religious institutions can prevent child abuse
Churches and other religious organizations can take a more proactive role to prevent child abuse not only on their campus and the campus of any facilities such as schools which they operate but also in the community.

What I’ve Learned About Those Who Serve
These are Tony Morgan's 15 random thoughts on volunter engagement.

3 Ways to See a Miracle
Rebekah Simo-Peter shares 3 ways a church can see a miracle.

Why Tracking Worship Attendance Is Vital
Thom exhorts church leaders to keep an accurate count of worship attendance. It’s not all about the numbers. He shares why.

Three Ways to Keep Accurate Worship Attendance
Can you really keep accurate worship attendance? Thom gets a hearty “yes” and explains three ways to do it.

3 Reasons Why Your Church Isn’t Engaging In Worship
On a scale of 1-10, how engaged is your church?

The Worship Team’s Guide to Transitions
We talk a lot about songs. We talk a lot about music. We talk a lot about worship. But an often neglected (but no less important) aspect of leading worship is how you approach transitions.

Transitions are important in liturgical worship as well as in so-called non-liturgical worship. I say so-called because services of public worship in supposedly non-liturgical churches do follow a predictable pattern from Sunday to Sunday with minor variations in that patter. This pattern is determined at the local level rather than prescribed at the denomination level as in liturgical churches. Factors that play a role in determining the pattern include local custom, the church leaders' understanding of the nature of worship and its place in the life of a church, and the influence of other churches.

6 Ways Digital Technology Deforms Us
We don’t only act on the world with our technology—our technology ends up acting on us.

VOICES: 7 things to do when your friend is hurting
According to Melissa Richeson, Job's frieds got some things right.

Shifting Our Mindset on Evangelism
We have to get underneath why people are not sharing the gospel. That frequently means facilitating a mental shift that can unleash their motivation and engagement. Mary T. Lederleitner believes that three areas are critical for making that change.

After tornado destroys vacant Arkansas church, diocese invests in booming corner of state
Hundreds of miles from the ruins of a long-vacant Arkansas church, destroyed this year by a tornado, another Episcopal congregation is rising – in a building that the Diocese of Arkansas purchased with some of the insurance money it received for the tornado-razed former church.

It is possible to plant and grow a new Episcopal church in a area which is experiencing a population boom and whose population is relatively diverse provided that the new church actively seeks to engage the community and connect with it. This observatio applies to Anglica Church in North America, Reformed Episcopal, Continuing Anglican, and United Methodist church plants.

Updated Report on United Methodist Disaffiliating Churches Shows Trends Holding
The Lewis Center has issued an updated report on the characteristics of churches disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church that covers more than 6,100 churches approved for disaffiliation through June 2023. There continue to be more similarities than differences between the cohort of disaffiliating churches and the total pool of United Methodist churches. But disaffiliating churches are disproportionately in the Southeastern and South Central Jurisdictions, they are less likely to be served by an active elder, they are disproportionately white, and they are more likely to have a male lead pastor.

Nearly 70% of churchgoers have 'a growing sense of fear': Lifeway Research
More than two-thirds of Protestant pastors have reported that there is “a growing sense of fear” in their congregations regarding the future, according to a recent report by Lifeway Research.

I observe a lot of fearmongering occuring on social media such as Facebook and YouTube which suggests to me that social media ifluencers are stoking the fears of US Christians. I also observe a lot of catastrophizing and other forms of distorted thinking both in posts on social media and in responses to these posts. This, I believe, accounts at least in part for this pessimistic outlook.The negatvity bias, the tendency to pay pay more attention to negative information than positive information also accout at least in part for the same outlook.

Americans worry that religious institutions are watering down, abandoning traditional beliefs: survey
While a significant number of American adults say religious faith is important to their everyday lives, many fear that religious institutions are “watering down” or abandoning traditional beliefs, according to a recent survey.

What is stoking the fears of US Christians reported in the first article is also encouragig the anxieties of Americans reported in this article. What these surveys are reporting are perceptions of what may be happening. They are not studying what is actually occurring. There is a lot of inaccurate information and intentional disinformation circulating on the internet.

Are white evangelical pastors at odds with their congregants? A new study says no.
A new study shows white evangelical clergy are as conservative, if not more so, as the people in their churches.