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A lament for the American Church
From Soong-Chan Tah’s book, Prophetic Lament
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Real Church. You may want to try it.
Great thoughts here from Scot McKnight on the local church. Ordinary small churches are the norm and the reality of church life, of kingdom-now life. We have the ideal in our head, and lifted up as THE model for church, McKnight tries to burst that bubble. As pastors we can even have our ideals: Pastors smitten by the ideal of…
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The break up of Mars Hill
In just two weeks, Mars Hill went from a huge celebrity pastor and the model for multisite churches to… this. I am not writing this to gloat. I am writing this to ask us, as American Christians, to do something extraordinary… think. We’re not good at it. The huge “crisis” of my young ministry was the cultish following people gave to…
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Digitizing our experiences
So many of our “experiences” in and with the world… and in and “with” God are digitized these days. To have the physical touch… the physical interaction… without the manipulation of some sort of digital enhancement… just doesn’t occur to us very much.
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We do this, we do this as a CHURCH
Powerful thoughts from Eugene Peterson in Reverse Thunder: The Revelation of John and Praying the Imagination. : The gospel is never for individuals but always for a people. Sin fragments us, separates us, and sentences us to solitary confinement. Gospel restores us, unites us, and sets us in community. The life of faith revealed and nurtured in the biblical narratives is…
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How to get God “back in our schools”
It’s not like he ever left… but at any rate… We have a great relationship with our schools where our church is located. It started when we decided to bless instead of curse. When I first arrived at the church as pastor I went all around town and introduced myself. City hall, police department, fire department, schools, businesses… I just…
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LIVE DEAD SCRIPTURE
Through the fall I will be preaching through a series called “LIVE DEAD.” Live Dead is a call to missions in our movement, but I also believe it is a call our church needs to hear as well. As we move through the fall, these are the texts we will reflect on and the dates I will be preaching: Sept.…
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Idol worship in the American church
I was in college in the days of the PTL scandal and Jimmy Swaggart’s failings. In the years since I honestly thought we could have learned our lessons from those debacles. Clearly, we have not. We continue to seek out evangelical superstars and the huge crowds and then we are shocked all over again when big failures happen. Roger Olson…
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A new “Live Dead” challenge
In our denomination, one of the most exciting movements I have seen being raised right now is the “Live Dead” movement. It is a radical commitment to reaching the unreached in some of the hardest places in the world. Something we are not very good at as American Christians is “living dead.” We are a saturated culture when it comes…
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I guess I don’t pay too much attention to where I live
Actually, I pay a LOT of attention to where I live. I love where I live and I want to love the people right where I live. This is what is kind of disappointing when it comes to church leaders/pastors. I was talking to a leader new to town and he had been warned off an area near my church…
Category: Church Life
