Tag: Church
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Center Church
I picked up Tim Keller‘s newest book, Center Church. It hit the bookstore shelves this morning. I have as yet read only a few chapters. But as expected it is an excellent expression of holistic gospel-centered ministry. In short it is a book about forming a Theological Vision for ministry, and living out that vision…
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Embracing the Brokenness of Your Church
This post by Tim Locke of Grace Community Church in Bridgewter NJ so captures the truth of a much needed lesson, I post it here below. *** Embracing the Broken Church! “I don’t feel comfortable inviting people to our church,” he said. “Why not?” I asked. “Our music isn’t upbeat enough, our people don’t sing…
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10 Contemporary Sacred Cows That Need Tipping
My grammar school days were lived out in a plush Philadelphia suburb. My first taste of culture shock came just before I entered high school, when my family made a cross country move and settled into a cul-de-sac home in a nice new development in a then-more-rural area outside Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. It was in…
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4 Possible Paradigm Shifts for the 21st Century Church
I am not sure in what context or venue he said this, but billionaire financier Warren Buffett is credited with having noted: “In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” Whatever the initial context, there is much wisdom in this insight that can be…
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10 Warning Signs of an Inwardly Obsessed Church
Researcher Thom Rainer warns of signs of a church that is so inwardly focused that it has ceased to be the church of Jesus Christ and has become, at best, a museum to (assumed) past glories, in which the membership makes up the board of directors. Rainer writes: Any healthy church must have some level…
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Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics – An Interview
I am not a fan of Diane Rehm, by any measure. Not only do I find her views unpalatable, her voice grates my ears. But as I was driving to an appointment today I clicked the NPR preset on my JEEP radio and in the matter of seconds had my attention arrested by the discussion…
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Lost Art of Discipleship
Sometimes we need to face up to difficult questions. Michael Horton, in his book The Gospel Commission, asks some really tough ones that every church, every church leader, every church member needs to ask themselves: Instead of reaching the lost, are we losing the reached? Or are those reared in our own churches being truly…
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Order of Sunday Fellow-Hip
A number of years ago I ran across this satirical outline for all-too-common worship planning. It is a sad but almost realistic caricature of what takes place in many churches every Sunday. See if you recognize any of these things. *** Prologue Fellowshippers shall enter the sanctuary garrulously, centering their attention on each other, and…
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Gauging Your Church’s Temperature
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, talks about looking at our churches through critical lenses: If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep…
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Loving Not Wisely But Too Well
Shakespeare’s Othello bellows: “I have loved not wisely but too well.” What he means is that his passions consumed him, and now he had destroyed what he loved. If you know the story, you will remember he had strangled his wife out of the mistaken fear that she had not been faithful to him. Similarly,…
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Practitioners of Love
Studying love is exciting, being taught the doctrines of love is enlightening, praying about love is heart moving, and seeing love modeled is motivating, but in the end, we must lovingly obey God and sacrificially serve people. We must be practitioners of love, not theorists. We must be doers of love, not talkers. We must…
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Church Consumerism
Wow! In this message Matt Chandler rants against the consumeristic climate catered to and cultivated by the contemporary Evangelical culture… I wish I had said this! OK, I have said this. I just wish I had said it as well as Matt does!
