This month our congregation celebrated its 30th anniversary. We did so with a joyful banquet on Saturday night and a celebratory worship..
I am delighted to be joining you for a weekly look at "Church Wellness."
In this column, we will consider the best practices for doing the basics of nurturing healthy churches. I have no axes to grind, no denominational or doctrinal "shoulds" to pursue. My only aim is to help your congregations be as healthy as they can be. That means focusing on the key factors affecting church health:
· Membership development
· Leadership development
· Communications strategy
· Spiritual development
· Young Adults ministry
· Listening church
· Metrics
Anger is to humanity what nuclear energy is to electricity. Powerful and creative. Volatile and dangerous.
God created anger, and for good reason. Anger stirs social workers to rescue abused children from violent parents. Anger provokes prophets to expose exploiting power brokers. Anger compels the courageous to break chains of injustice. Anger confronts religious hypocrites and drives moneychangers out of temples.
Then again, evil hijacks anger for destructive purposes. It batters spouses and children. It unleashes the privileged against the powerless--and vice versa. It propagates hatred. It murders innocents. It morphs into resentment, escalates into bitterness, depresses into isolation, and explodes into carnage.
We have witnessed what happens when anger goes nuclear. 9-11. Columbine. Ted Bundy. The recent shooting rampage at Virginia Tech provided its own commentary in the form of a video made by the shooter. It showcased rage's demonic darkness.
Few of us will ever descend into the pit of wickedness as did that student, but every one of us experiences anger.
A reporter asked me this morning prior to worship: "What will be the first words that you speak to your congregation on..
The Lenten season has come and gone again. Let's face it. It was a tough decision--what we agreed with ourselves to relinquish for Lent.
Chocolate always seems to muddle the question. How to keep going and stay sweetly resolved for forty days while wandering a dessert wilderness. Why not tomatoes? After all, they're seedy. And it is so much easier to stay away from such flagrant bursts of flesh. To soften the blow of denial, one pastor shared recently, "Don't even ask what happened the Lent I tried giving up caffeine."
Whatever happened, we're back onto salsa and desserts with a relish, weighing in heavy on the thought that time of reflection on passion and hymns of refrain are over for another year. The good news is Christ has risen indeed!
Recently, I went to an indoor water park with my daughter. After a cruel, cold winter and spring in the D.C. region, I haven't seen my legs in months, and when I looked down, I noticed that a have multiple bruises in a neat line above my knees. I pressed on a brown spot, felt the dull ache of confined pain, and wondered how the small injuries occurred. I couldn't remember, couldn't figure it out.
It may sound strange, but the experience reminded me a lot of being a pastor, especially when ministering to people under the age of forty. Some of them, when they enter the sanctuary, don't come in with fresh and flawless skin, they have these bruises, sensitive places where they've been hurt, often by religious organizations. Inside our church and outside of it, I've seen the discoloration appear. Recently the marks have surfaced with the repeated and adamant claim of young Christians who say, "We're not like them."
Tom Taylor, former pastor of Glenkirk Church in Glendora, Calif., now is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s deputy executive director for mission. Here are excerpts from a conversation Taylor had with the Outlook's national reporter, Leslie Scanlon.
LS: Now that you've been in the job for a few months, what are some of your general thoughts on how it's going?
TT: One of the first impressions I had in the first month or two was that I was surprised, really surprised in some ways, at how many great things are going in the life of this General Assembly. ... One of the real challenges I've seen is our communications challenge, to make sure we tell those stories and get the word out.
I could hardly believe my ears when a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor blurted a few years ago, "We need to rethink the whole topic of women's ordination." I was stunned because those words were coming from a woman.
"Why of all things do we need that?" I reacted. "Women's ordination is an established policy in the denomination."
"But too many people support it for the wrong reasons," she responded. She then explained how many of her colleagues had sensed a deep calling to Christian vocation, including the proclamation of the Word. But they also knew that the Bible singles them out to keep silent in church. Recognizing the disparity between God's call to them and God's Word to all, they simply chose to dismiss the Word -- at least those specific, exclusionary texts -- as pre-modern expressions of male chauvinism and patriarchy.
If every other area is getting new leaders, why not the racial-ethnic ministries or the women's ministries of the General Assembly? They both are welcoming one and the same new leader. Rhashell Hunter is the newly-arrived director for Racial-Ethnic and Women's Ministries for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s General Assembly Council.
On Easter Sunday, Hunter preached her final sermon as pastor of the Community Church in Flint, Mich., a congregation of about 130 members, where she had served for nine years.
She grew up in the manse; father Charles H. Hunter is a Presbyterian pastor. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts, theatre, journalism, and teacher education. While pursuing a theatre career in New York City, she volunteered in an inner city soup kitchen. Soon she sensed a pastoral call and went to McCormick Theological Seminary, where she earned an M.Div. Later she returned there and earned a D.Min. with a focus in preaching.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
When Rhonda Kelley reads the Easter drama in her Bible, the professor of women's ministry feels God's affirmation of her as a woman.
"Jesus really valued women and always reached out to women," said Kelley, who teaches at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is co-editor of The Woman's Study Bible.
Women figure prominently in the Gospel lessons that culminate in Jesus' resurrection. In roles unusual for that period, they travel with Jesus and then are witnesses to his crucifixion and burial. And women, including Mary Magdalene, are the first to learn that his tomb is empty.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
Anne Lamott is the kind of Christian who makes a lot of other Christians nervous.
I think it's because she's honest.
She's honest about her sins, her foibles and her faith, and she makes no excuses for any of them.
She's wide open about her less-than-perfect faith walk, about being a single mother, a recovering addict, a bleeding-heart liberal, neurotic, insecure, and wickedly funny. Lamott has chronicled her wacky and (sometimes) wild adventures in faith in books such as Traveling Mercies, Plan B, and most recently the wonderful Grace (Eventually).
She makes a lot of people who also call themselves Christians nervous -- and sometimes even angry -- because Lamott should, they think, either keep her imperfections to herself or stop calling herself a Christian.
The novel The Devil Wears Prada is a serious study of the power of labels to define a person's worth. Author Lauren Weisberger was formerly assistant to the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour. Thus, the novel is based on Lauren's earlier career with its addiction to fashion. The addictive ingredient is the glow, lure, and status of the designer label: Versace, Chanel, Christian Dior, Gucci, Manolo, and most supremely, Prada. The measure of a person is the label. Why the devil herself (the magazine editor in the movie version) wears Prada!
It is a year since Leslie Scanlon in May 2006 reported our denomination's deepest budget cut and the most extensive reordering of..
As I watch the slow disappearance of brothers and sisters who believe that the new wine in them demands new wineskins, I..
They didn't set out to make a statement. They simply were looking for a new president.
Their schools, er, uh, school -- Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education -- shares a storied history and a legacy for academic excellence in educator training and minister formation.
A year ago President Louis Weeks announced his retirement plans. Board Chair Art Ross commissioned the search committee, led by John Kuykendall, to find a gifted leader to succeed him.
The film "Amazing Grace" is coming or has come, to a theatre near you. A high-minded friend who has seen the film told me that it was a "must see." He also told me that the film's music was the tune of what has become our country's unofficial national hymn: Amazing Grace, or, as the tune is also called, New Britain. This hymn was, until the 1930s, sung to a variety of other tunes. Had it not been married more recently to the tune to which it is usually sung today, it might have never made it to the charts.
Parent tears ' My tears have been my food--day and night.' Psalm 42:3 Feed us OH-God on the tears of our sorrows..
I think that all of us this week have felt like we have been living inside a Wizard of Oz storybook. Midweek..
This week a college student coolly, cruelly and deliberately murdered thirty-two fellow students and professors at Virginia Tech University. Scores of others..
What's it take to build an effective Christian education program these days?
That question is being asked in virtually every Christian education committee in every church everywhere. Curriculum publishing companies are asking it as well. Their answers could help congregations become centers of vital Christian education.
That first question is the biggest: So how do you build an effective Christian education program these days? The one word that arises repeatedly is relevance.
The following publishers provide a variety of age-appropriate curricula for use in the churches:
Akaloo by Augsburg/Congregational Ministries Publishing
Bible Blitz® by Group Publishing
FaithWeaver® by Group Publishing
The Kerygma
Living Inside Outâ„¢ by Group Publishing
We Believe: God's Word for God's People by Congregational Ministries Publishing
Workshop Rotation Model Sunday School by Potter's Publishing
Mom always stopped the car whenever she scouted an open parking space near Joe Gatta's on Main Street. His little deli -- the size of a one-car garage -- provided the freshest fruit and vegetables, delivered there right from the farm.
Today Joe Gatta's is no more. In a supermarket world, only a few delicatessens still survive. We Americans enjoy the wide array of choices and the wide range of prices -- from store brand staples to exotic imports -- now provided by the superstores that dot the landscape.
That culture change has depressed many a Main Street. It also has hurt many a Church Street. Many small and medium size churches have suffered through an era of diminishing returns, as supermarket churches have boomed.
No matter what level of student you're teaching--pre-school, adult, or anyone in between--your goal is not only to get through the lesson, or even for your students to get information, but to have actual learning going on in your classroom. You want your students to understand God's Word, and to be changed by a relationship with Jesus.
Statistics tell us that people retain only about ten percent of what they hear or read. And with the best of intentions many, if not most, Christian-education programs still teach this way, by reading and/or by the teacher doing all the talking. But those same statistics tell us that people remember up to 90% of what they experience. So how can you bring real-life experience into your classroom?
©2001, Potter's Publishing, adapted with permission
The Workshop Rotation Model is spreading like the flames of the Holy Spirit across the country. Churches embrace the model as the most exciting Sunday school study method in a long time. As it spreads it is important to ensure and preserve the integrity of the model, to maintain consistency with its educational philosophy.
The model's initial attraction is its varied and exciting activities and decorative room interiors. If the model were to rely only on attractive workshops, however, the flames soon would burn out.
Theological and educational underpinnings support the Workshop Rotation Model providing the possibility of creative and sound Bible study.
Stephen Prothero has confirmed statistically what we had perceived anecdotally. His book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't says that Americans are biblically illiterate. George Barna's Growing True Disciples: New Strategies for Producing Genuine Followers of Christ reinforces that assessment. It's no wonder that publication after publication today calls us to re-think our approaches to adult discipleship and the Christian Education that enables such discipleship to develop.
The challenges facing our work in adult discipleship parallel the challenges facing the entire ministry of our congregations. In our high velocity society, we can ill afford to follow the traditional practice of simply repeating last year's program. We need to experiment with ministry designs aimed at developing adults as Christian disciples.
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