The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell has served as senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, TX since 1982. During that time the church has grown from around twenty-five active members to over 18,000. Recently, the Rev. Caldwell was asked, by the United Methodist News Service, "What makes Windsor Village a vital congregation?" He answered: When I came in 1982, I shared with the administrative council then that we were going to do three things, and we’re still Read More …
Discipleship
Technology and the Church: Crisis or Opportunity (#0373)
Lisa Miller is the author of Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife (2010), and formerly served as religion editor at Newsweek. She recently wrote "My Take: how technology could bring down the church," for CNN's Belief Blog. In this article Miller argues that the printing press was the key technology that enabled the success of the Protestant Reformation and the current move away from print editions of the Bible to digital ones like YouVersion may enable Read More …
Classroom Conversations Go the Way of Social Media (#0372)
Trip Gabriel's recent New York Times article, "Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media," explores the uses of backchannels (real-time online dialogue about a speaker or topic) in the classroom. While backchannels are being utilized at all levels of education - from elementary schools to graduate degree programs - the overall adoption rates are low. Those who leverage this new interactive supplement to the learning experience employ a variety of means including Twitter, Read More …
Another Day When the World Didn’t End (#0370)
Harold Camping has been in the news the last several days thanks to his prediction (and his organization's costly campaign to alert the world) that the rapture will occur today at 6:00 p.m. in all time zones. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Manya A. Brachear explains: Don't mark your calendars yet. Reports that the world will end Saturday are greatly exaggerated, according to many evangelical Christian scholars. For starters, California radio host Harold Camping, 89, president Read More …
New Ways of Being Church (#0365)
One of many signs of the increasing awareness of the importance of technology for ministry was The Clergy Journal's April/May 2011 edition's theme: Technology and Community: Building Community. Keith Howard, past executive director of the Emerging Spirit initiative of the United Church of Canada, and Aaron McCarroll Gallegos, executive producer of wondercafe.ca, contributed an article entitled "Technology and Community Building," which includes these challenging words: Social media Read More …
It’s Not About . . . (#0364)
Carlos Whittaker describes himself as "an artist, pastor, thinker, experience architect, and Web 2.0 junkie." After serving in local church ministry as Pastor of Worship and Creative Arts at Sandals Church in Riverside California and as Director of Service Programming at Buckhead Church (a campus of North Point Community Church), he signed with Integrity Music and launched a full-time career in the recording industry. Recently he blogged about what the life of faith is not and Read More …
Review of Naked Spirituality (#0363)
Meet the Author Brian McLaren served in pastoral ministry for twenty years as the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church. In 2006, he stepped down from that role to devote his time to writing and speaking. McLaren has written numerous books, including Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words (2011), Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices (2010), A New Kind of Christianity (2010), and Everything Must Change: When the World's Read More …
5 Smooth Stones of Liberal Religion (#0362)
Unitarian Universalist minister James Luther Adams proposed five smooth stones of liberal religion in an essay entitled "Guiding Principles for a Free Faith," which was published in On Being Human Religiously: Selected Essays in Religion and Society (Max Stackhouse, ed. Beacon Press, 1976, pp. 12—20). R. Lloyd Ryan summarizes JLA's smooth stones: Revelation is continuous. Relationships ought to rest on mutual and free consent. We need to work together for just Read More …
Full LGBT Equality in the Church (#0360)
Believe Out Loud is a project of Intersections International that is committed to being a" trans-denominational movement that promotes LGBT-inclusion in the Christian church." Recently they launched a campaign to get one million Christians to sign on in support of "full LGBT equality in the church." Sojourners, led by Jim Wallis, rejected their new 83 second ad (watch below) depicting lesbian moms and their son entering a new church and receiving a welcome from the Read More …
Effective Worship Services? (#0358)
John Ortberg is the Senior Pastor of the 4,000 member Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) and the author of multiple books on spiritual formation. In the Spring 2011 edition of Leadership Journal, he wrote an article entitled "What Does God Think of Entertainment," in which he set forth his view on what a successful worship service looks like: The primary criteria for the effectiveness of a church service is not "holding people's attention." It's not compliments after the service Read More …