Wednesday's Catch: 'The Next Generation Is Leaving the Faith Earlier Than You Realize' And More

The Next Generation Is Leaving the Faith Earlier Than You Realize
The next generation is often leaving the faith while under the supervision of parents who believe they’re passing on their religious values.

Parents who attend church with their children once or twice a month are not conveying to their kids the importance of church attendance or the Christian faith.

Lay Preachers Meet Growing Need
Attending worship in Episcopal congregations increasingly means hearing a homily from a layperson rather than a priest. The faithful are hearing heartfelt accounts of what it’s like to follow Christ in today’s messy, complex world. And a new program is making sure laypeople are trained in the homiletic craft — more trained, in fact, than most priests are — when they step into the pulpit.

Both the United Methodist Church and The Methodist Church in Britain license lay persons not only to preach sermons but also to administer the sacraments, that is baptize and consecrate the bread and wine for Holy Communion. In the light of the shortage of vocations and the aging of existing clergy, the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations need to consider taking that step.

Serving God in Our Winter Years
You will never reach the age when there is not a good work for you to do for God’s kingdom. Don’t let others tell you that your best days are behind you. Don’t buy the lie that the rest of your life is an extended vacation. God still has something for you yet.

A Case for Christian Optimism
Once the preserve of the middle-aged and elderly, ‘declinism’ has reached the mainstream in the Western world. The nagging feeling that life is on a downward trend, that things are not what they once were, that our future is less bright than our past, now plagues public discourse and popular media. The complex causes for this range across political, social, ecological, economic and religious arenas, and are symptomatic of an increasingly polarised culture where people on opposite sides of almost everything fear the consequences of their enemies’ ideas or the end of the world.

Why Every Single Word in the Bible Matters for You Today
Sam Rainer shares his take on the Bible.

The Power of Humor and Storytelling in Sharing the Gospel
There is power in indirect communication. When we go about our evangelism efforts, sometimes we forget how to communicate effectively with those we are trying to reach. We go about it directly. And sometimes that works. But most of the time, people are interested in stories they can identify with to know that if it happened for someone, it could happen for them.

3 Ways Worship Leaders Can Encourage Worship
It’s amazing to see the spiritual growth happen in corporate worship as your people slowly, but surely, let go and embrace biblical expression to their God. As a worship leader, you can be a catalyst for that growth, and help encourage worship.

7 Simple Prayer Ideas for Daily Prayer
It’s helpful in daily prayer to explore simple prayer ideas. Here are seven prayer ideas which are practiced consistently in Scripture. They would be useful in corporate settings as well in personal prayer.

6 Church Members Who Build Up the Church
I recommend sharing this article with members and attendees of your church. It offers a number of ways that they can help to build up the church.

Mainline Protestant pastors more likely to be liberal than their congregants: survey
Pastors at mainline Protestant churches are much more likely to identify as liberal than their congregants as most of them hold progressive positions on hot-button social issues, according to a new survey.

There are no surprises in the findings of this survey. A widening gap between mainline clergy and their congregations has been observable since the 1980s if not earlier.