Yesterday I reviewed Robert Welch's Church Administration: Creating Efficiency for Effective Ministry, 2nd edition (2011). In that post, I noted that his research shows most pastors graduate from seminary with little or no preparation for church administration even though the average pastor spends around half of her or his time on such tasks. When I entered seminary, I already had a solid educational and experiential background in administration outside of the for-profit sector. Read More …
Review of Church Administration (#0484)
Meet the Author Robert H. Welch currently serves as Chair of the Christian Education Division and professor of Church Administration at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Prior to this position, he retired from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he had also served as a professor of Administration. In addition to his academic background in church administration, Welch served in administrative capacities in multiple Baptist churches after retiring from Read More …
Growing Through Interreligious Dialogue (#0483)
Austin Almaguer blogged about the opportunity he had, as a part of his summer fellowship, to meet Steve Perkins and to talk to him about interreligious matters. Perkins has been with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-based organization that promotes sustainable urban communities, since 1980. He is currently Senior Vice President of that organization and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. Reflecting on Read More …
Beyond Survival: A Way Forward for Denominations (#0482)
Eric Van Meter's recent commentary, "Can Our Denomination Overcome its Fear of Failure?," considers the decades old struggle facing mainline denominations: reversing the trend of declining membership. Van Meter writes, "We United Methodists have launched one initiative after another in the past four decades, only to watch our churches decline in every measurable category, except average age." Well aware of the many initiatives, past and present, undertaken by his denomination and the Read More …
Review of The Church and New Media (#0481)
Meet the Authors Brandon Vogt is a Catholic layperson who blogs about theology, technology, social justice and books at ThinVeil.net. Vogt contributes the text's introduction and conclusion while relying on authors with varied backgrounds and expertise to contribute the chapters: Father Robert Barron, Jennifer Fulwiler, Marcel LeJeune, Mark P. Shea, Taylor Marshall, Father Dwight Longenecker, Scot Landry, Matt Warner, Lisa M. Hendey, Thomas Peters, Shawn Carney. Additionally, Read More …
Joining a Church – It’s Complicated (#0480)
Michael L. Lindvall, Senior Pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, wrote an article in the September 6, 2011 edition of the Christian Century about the mixed motives people have when joining a church. Sharing insight from his own experience and data to show that this is not merely a recent or American trend, he suggests that people do not join churches out of "pure conviction." He suggests that this assumption "underestimates God" and also "misunderstands Read More …
Your Pastor Wants to Tell You (#0479)
W. Allen Thomason recently wrote a post about things your pastor wants to tell you, but lacks the courage to say. He writes, "I know that every pastor has things on his or her heart that he or she would love to tell the church, but they never get said for fear that it might cost them their job in the long run." The following items are among those on Thomason's list: The Pastor is not responsible to do all your “Christian Stuff” for you You are not as loving as you think you are Read More …
More Variety in Worship or Not? (#0478)
Jim Moss is the pastor of Clarksville Presbyterian Church in Clarksville, VA. He and I have interacted from time to time via Twitter, and I appreciate his willingness to discuss big issues. Recently, he reflected on a conversation he had with several others via Twitter about the future of the church. More specifically, he was surprised to find less openness from progressive clergy to the possibility of pursuing alternative styles of worship as one of many avenues toward the Read More …
Review of Working with Words (#0477)
Meet the Author Stanley Hauerwas is currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, where he has been on faculty since 1984. Additionally, he holds a joint appointment in Duke Law School. Previously, he taught at the University of Notre Dame. Hauerwas was named America's Best Theologian by Time magazine in 2001. He has been a prolific author and speaker throughout his career. Publishers Weekly named his memoir, Read More …
Rethinking Religious Rules (#0476)
This morning I am preaching at Naples United Church of Christ in Naples, FL. You can read the full text of my sermon, Rethinking Religious Rules, here. For more information about the books referenced visit my review of One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow and my thoughts on The Jesus Creed, which was a part of my Who is Jesus? series. So What? In his recent book, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, Scot McKnight writes these words: “Every religious culture Read More …