Meet the Author Kyle Idleman is the teaching pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY, which is the fifth largest church in America. After attending Ozark Christian College, he did an internship at Southeast Christian, planted Real Life Church in Southern California, and then returned to Southeast Christian in 2002. Idleman is the author and presenter of the award winning video curriculum H2O: A Journey of Faith and The Easter Experience. His first book, Read More …
How Americans Interpret the Bible (#0424)
According to the latest research by Gallup, within "most major U.S. subgroups, a plurality or majority holds the view that the Bible is the inspired word of God, rather than the actual word of God or a book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts." The chart below illustrates how views of the Bible have changed over time. So What? Currently, 3 in 10 Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God. Preference for the literal Read More …
Church Website Checklist (#0423)
Josh Henry, Managing Partner with The Church Business Guys, recently shared his list of basic do's and don'ts for church websites: Don’t overcomplicate your domain name . . . Use caution when hiring a relative, close friend, high school student or church member who says they can do it . . . Use free tools sparingly . . . Consider the website an investment . . . Utilize your website as a ministry of your church . . . Take advantage of the communication opportunity. Read More …
The UCC, General Synod, and the Trinity (#0422)
Earlier this month, Terry Mattingly wrote a misguided and poorly researched article, "Got News? Adios to God the Father?" suggesting that the United Church of Christ was about to move away from being a fully Trinitarian denomination. This kind of journalism is not what one would expect from Mattingly who writes the nationally syndicated "On Religion" column for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., and is director of the Washington Journalism Read More …
Review of The World’s Christians (#0421)
Meet the Author Douglas Jacobsen has taught at Messiah College in Grantham, PA since 1984. Currently he serves as Distinguished Professor of Church History and Theology. Jacobsen is a member of the United Church of Christ and serves on the Theological Commission of the UCC Penn Central Conference. Jacobsen is the author of several books including Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation (with Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, 2004) and The World's Read More …
High Cost of College (#0420)
Michael Feldstein, project manager at Oracle, shared a chart showing the skyrocketing cost of college tuition (and other fees) created by Anya Kamenetz for a presentation earlier this year about the transformation of higher education. So What? In the same presentation Kamenetz notes that, according to the College Board, the full cost of a public BA is $112,520, which reflects an increase of 24% over the last five years (from the 2005-06 school year to the 2010-2011 school year). While Read More …
Facebook Users Are . . . (#0419)
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently released Social Networking Sites and our Lives, which is a report based on the findings of a survey on Americans' use of the internet conducted from October 20 to November 28, 2010 with a sample of 2,255 adults, age 18 and older who were contacted via both landline and cellular phones. The research supports the commonly held view that Facebook is currently the dominant social networking option with some Read More …
Social Networking Users Double in 2 Years (#0418)
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently released Social Networking Sites and our Lives, which is a report based on the findings of a survey on Americans' use of the internet conducted from October 20 to November 28, 2010 with a sample of 2,255 adults, age 18 and older who were contacted via both landline and cellular phones. The research shows: "The number of those using social networking sites has nearly doubled since 2008 and the population Read More …
Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World (#0417)
The world in which we now live is multi-religious. For the last five years, the World Council of Churches, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the World Evangelical Alliance have worked together to craft "Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World: Recommendations for Conduct," which provides recommendations for "conduct on Christian witness around the world." The document recommends the authoring bodies: study the issues set out in this Read More …
How Much Patriotism is Too Much? (#0416)
Matthew Kelley, pastor of Arlington United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN, recently wrote an article about the difficult situation many pastors face on Independence Day weekend regarding just how much celebration of that national holiday is appropriate in worship. He relates an experience he had while serving as pastor of a church in a town with a military base. On a regular Lenten Sunday, not near any national holiday, a guest "sang Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an Read More …