Many mainline denominations face or will soon face clergy shortages. As a result several denominations have and others are in the process of creating guidelines that allow multiple paths to ministry especially to facilitate providing enough clergy to fill pastoral positions in smaller congregations. Young clergy in their twenties and thirties are increasingly rare and makeup a small percentage of the clergy in any given denominational tradition, especially in traditions where a Read More …
Trends
Review of Transformational Church (#0132)
Stetzer, Ed and Rainer, Thom S. Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations. B&H Publishing, 2010. ISBN: 9781433669300. Meet the Authors Ed Stetzer is the President and Missiologist in Residence of LifeWay Research. Ed is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach Magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is Read More …
Review of Nudge (#0130)
Sweet, Leonard. Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who's Already There. David C. Cook, 2010. ISBN: 9781434764744. Meet the Author Leonard Sweet is the E. Stanley Jones professor of evangelism at Drew University and visiting distinguished professor of Evangelism at George Fox University, was voted one of the 50 Most Influential Christians in America, and continues to write and speak prophetically about the church. An ordained United Methodist pastor, Sweet has authored Read More …
Progressive Christian Worship Music (#0124)
Bryan Sirchio is uniquely qualified to write about progressive Christian worship music. After graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary, he was ordained in the United Church of Christ and served as a pastor. Since 1987 he has traveled extensively doing concerts and leading worship services and retreats through his own Crosswind Music. Sirchio has released 12 CDs, 3 study guides, and 4 songbooks. He is currently writing his first book: Progressive Christian Read More …
The Future of the UCC (#0123)
Over the last few years, the assumption that denominations will continue "as is" for many years to come has been dying. Increasingly, mainline pastors and even denominational leaders have been advocating for a variety of possibilities for reform that will help give shape to a new type of national organization that will be for their respective tradition what denomination served as in modernity. A week ago, Stephen Sterner wrote an article about what he sees as likely for the future of the Read More …
A New Day in the PCUSA (#0121)
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is one of several mainline denominations reconsidering what it means to be a denomination in the twenty-first century and how best to organize church governance in an increasingly postmodern world. In recent years two thirty-somethings have been elected to the denomination's top two posts: Moderator and Vice-Moderator. The thirty-nine year old Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, currently the founding pastor of Mission Bay Community Church in San Read More …
HIV/AIDS – A Justice Issue (#0120)
Currently, the 18th International Aids Conference is meeting in Vienna, Austria. This year's conference attendees number around 20,000 and represent 185 countries. Among the main topics is the promotion of widespread testing and access to treatment. According to the latest statistics from the United Nations there were 33.4 million people living with HIV at the end of 2008. So What? The day before the conference began, a multi-faith meeting was held to discuss the Read More …
Being Religious in China (#0119)
On July 18 Louisa Lim wrote an article for NPR about the growth of religious practice in China. Lim writes: In the country's first major survey on religious beliefs, conducted in 2006, 31.4 percent of about 4,500 people questioned described themselves as religious. That amounts to more than 300 million religious believers, an astonishing number in an officially atheist country, and three times higher than the last official estimate, which had largely remained unchanged for years. The Read More …
Becoming an Economic Justice Church (#0118)
Economic Justice Churches The United Church of Christ passed a resolution at its most recent General Synod that encourages churches to engage in a discernment process of study, witness and action to decide whether to become an economic justice church. To help facilitate that consideration, the UCC's Justice and Witness Ministries has created a task force to develop an Economic Justice Church Covenant Program. According to a UCC release dated July 15, the Task Force recently Read More …
How Did Christians Get Here? (#0116)
How Did Christians Get Here? Have you ever stopped to wonder why most people are Christians? In many churches, especially those in evangelical denominations, there continues to be a great deal of discussion about things like evangelism, conversion, and church growth. The assumption of those conversations is that many people have and will continue to move from no faith or another faith to the Christian faith. In reality, most people are born into the faith. Bradley Wright, a Read More …