Wednesday's Catch: 'The Church's Midlife Crisis' And More

The Church's Midlife Crisis
Is your church having a bit of a midlife crisis? Is your church in the middle of a "What am I doing with my life?" existential dread? There is a minivan in my neighborhood with a bumper sticker that reads, "I'm not lost, I'm exploring." I suspect many of our churches would like to claim the same: kind of lost, not quite sure where we're going, and either in denial or completely oblivious.

6 Opportunities for Churches with Aging Memberships
Research undertaken by the Lewis Center’s Religious Workforce Project confirms that the over-representation of older people in churches has become more pronounced. Lovett Weems unpacks factors related to this trend and identifies six ways a church can respond to an aging membership base.

How Do Growing Churches Reach Young Families?
There are good examples of growing churches reaching young families. What are they doing differently than others? Thom and Sam answer this question. There is more to this issue than being a large church in a growing suburb. Churches reaching young families come in a variety of sizes and locations.

Five Ways to Make an Aging Congregation Younger
It is one of the top three requests for help we get at Church Answers: “Our church membership continues to get older. What do we do?” Is there a solution to this challenge? Based upon some great insights from church leaders, I do indeed see how God is working to move the aging church forward. Here are the five most common responses we have gotten at Church Answers....

How Senior Adult Churches Can Reach Young Families
An older church is not a lost cause! Josh and Sam discuss how a church filled with senior adults can make the transition and reach young families. A church of predominantly senior adults has unique challenges but also opportunities. These congregations can get younger, and the cohosts discuss some ways this shift to occur.

8 Changes in Young People I’ve Seen Over 25 years
I’m in my 26th year of seminary teaching, so I’ve been working with young people for many years. Over the years, my sense is that this generation has changed. Here are some changes I’ve seen....

Transitioning a Senior Adult Church to One Who Reaches all Generations
We discuss a recent post on senior adult churches who are wanting to reach a younger generation and the consequences of not being willing to change to do so.

Do You Really Know the Community Around Your Church? Four Often-Missed Demographics
Your church address is not an accident. God sovereignly placed your church in its location to reach the people around you. Do you know them? Jesus’ Great Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40) gives clear instructions: Love your neighbor. Knowing your neighbor is the first step to loving your neighbor. Do you really know your neighbors? Church leaders often miss four basic demographics. I’ll use my community in Bradenton, Florida as an example.

Watch Out for These Lies the Devil Says About God’s Word
If I were the devil, I would do everything in my power to keep you from the Word of God. I would say anything I could think of, anything I thought you would believe, anything that works, to get you to read other things. As Paul said, “We are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11). We know how he works. And here are some of the lies we have noticed pouring out of his factory, all geared toward destroying confidence in God’s Word.

John Wesley, an Anglican priest, a leading figure in the eighteenth century Evangelical Revival, and founder of the Methodist movement, considered "searching the Scriptures," reading, studying, and meditating upon the Scriptures, as one of the primary means of grace which God has ordained and through which God arouses and strengthens our faith and transforms our lives. He not only urged the early Methodists to search the Scriptures but also practiced what he preached. He always rose early and devoted the early morning hours to searching the Scriptures and prayer.

Maybe We Make Meditation Too Difficult
Of all the Christian disciplines, it is my guess that meditation may be the least practiced—though I suppose fasting might have something to say about that. Most people diligently make time to read the Bible and pray. And yet, while most people have good intentions when it comes to meditation, it so often seems to get displaced. After all, life is busy, the world is noisy, and meditation is a challenge. But I wonder if part of the problem is that we have made meditation too difficult. I wonder if we’ve made it a little too abstract, a little too inactive, and perhaps a little too solitary.