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 …
The Influence of Technology (#0438)
"The Family and Technology Report" is one of the Barna Group's latest publications. The report is based on research conducted in partnership with Orange, which is part of the reThink Group. "The innovative study included nationwide interviews among parents and 11- to 17-year-olds from the same households, allowing comparisons between the parents and the tweens and teenagers who reside in the same home." Recently, Church Juice's Jerod Clark discussed the study's five findings and Read More …
From Loving God to . . . (#0437)
John Jensen blogs about a number of topics and relates each of them to "what Jesus has to do with it all." Recently, he wrote a post titled "Ten Things I would say to the Church (if they listened to me)" featuring the following items: Love God, love one another, love your neighbor, everyone is your neighbor . . . What you do (orthopraxy) is as important, if not more important as what you believe (orthodoxy) . . . Stop trying to get the world to come into your church, and get your Read More …
Preferred Frequency for Communion / Lord’s Supper / Eucharist (#0436)
The Presbyterian Church USA recently shared the results of their research about the preferred frequency of the sacrament of Holy Communion, which suggests "most Presbyterians worship in congregations that celebrate the Lord’s Supper once a month, and most like that frequency." Additionally, the research shows: Three-quarters of members, elders, pastors and non-pastoral ministers are part of a congregation that celebrates the Lord’s Supper once a month. Seven in 10 Read More …