Deborah Bruce and Joelle Anderson recently co-authored an article exploring research about the makeup of new church members. More specifically, they considered who is joining Presbyterian (PCUSA) congregations. They report that "in the typical PC(USA) congregation about three in ten worshipers are new people who began attending there in the past five years." These newcomers can be grouped into four categories: First-timers with no church background. Only 8% Read More …
7 in 10 Now Use Video Sharing (#0447)
According to the latest research by the Pew Research Center, 7 in 10 (71%) of American adults who go online now use video sharing sites. The current number represents a five-percentage-point increase from the 66% of online adults who reported being video-sharing site users a year earlier and a 38-point increase from five years ago when the Pew Internet Project took its first reading on use of such sites. So What? Around the time the folks at Pew started this annual survey, many larger Read More …
Your Church’s Social Media Goals (#0446)
Adam Bowers, owner of Adam Bowers Media, recently blogged about the advice he gives churches about creating social media goals. Since there is no universally accepted standard of success and no simple way for parishes to determine how their results compare to other churches, he presents a solid framework for developing a social media strategy: Do your homework – research pre-existing social media use at your church. Before you can formulate goals, you need to make sure Read More …
Review of A Public Faith (#0445)
Meet the Author Miroslav Volf is the Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School. He was born in Croatia, and studied at Evangelical-Theological, Osijek, Fuller Theological Seminary and received his doctoral degree from the University of Tübingen, where he studied under Jürgen Moltmann. As “a member of the Episcopal Church in the Read More …
Why Your Ministry Should Have a Blog (#0444)
Guy Chmieleski has served in campus ministry at four institutions of higher education associated with three different denominations (Baptist, United Methodist and Church of Christ). On his blog, he shared his own experiences as a blogger, a bit about a presentation on why blogging is important that he made recently to the United Methodist Campus Ministry Association, and four reasons why he will be integrating a blog into his campus ministry work and thinks other Read More …
Marketing a Mainline Congregation (#0443)
Martin Thielen, Senior Pastor of the 7,600-member Brentwood United Methodist Church, wrote the cover story for the July 26 (2011) edition of the Christian Century about his experience marketing his previous parish. Initially a Southern Baptist, he left that denomination when it took a fundamentalist turn to become a United Methodist pastor. In the article he shares what he learned while Senior Pastor of Lebanon First United Methodist Church in Read More …
Review of Veneer (#0442)
Meet the Authors Jason Locy is founder and Creative Director of FiveStone, a multidisciplinary design studio whose client list includes MTV, Chick-fil-A, Q, and Catalyst. Timothy Willard is a full-time writer who earned a Master of Arts in Christian Thought from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society (2011), which they co-authored, is each author's first book. Book Basics Jason invited Tim to join his men's Read More …
The Introverted Ministry Leader (#0441)
Adam S. McHugh, Presbyterian pastor and author of Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture (2009), wrote an article in the Summer 2011 edition of Leadership Journal about introverted leaders that included these words: . . . in more than a decade of Christian leadership I have come to see the significant contributions introverts make to others and have learned effective introverted models of leadership. So we must distinguish between our energy level Read More …
Learning the Unwritten Rules of Social Media (#0440)
Rajesh Setty, author of Upbeat: Cultivating the Right Attitude in Tough Times (2009) and President of Foresight Plus, recently shared his list of the unwritten rules of social media: Connection does not imply permission Access does not imply entitlement Activity is not productivity More is not better Reciprocation is optional Amplification without accomplishment is futile Engagement without enrichment is not effective So What? Most who enter the world of social media do so Read More …
Review of I Knew Jesus Before He Was a Christian . . . (#0439)
Meet the Author Rubel Shelly is the President of Rochester College (Rochester, MI), a school affiliated with a student body of approximately 900. Previously, he served as the Senior Minister of Woodmont Hills (Nashville, TN) from 1978 to 2005. Shelly is the author or co-author of over 30 books including The Jesus Proposal: A Theological Framework for Maintaining the Unity of the Body of Christ (2006 with John O. York), What Would Jesus Do Today (2008 with Read More …