Earlier this month, I wrote "A Shift in Theological Education" to highlight the shift in seminary education from primarily an on campus face-to-face learning experience to one that includes hybrid (using both face-to-face and online components) or online courses. This shift mirrors what has happened in higher education more generally where online enrollment grew 20% over the most recently available seven year period from 9% to 29%. Interestingly, The Reverend Dr. Frederick W. Read More …
Review of Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood (#0314)
Alan J. Roxburgh. Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood. Baker Books, 2011. ISBN: 780801072314. Meet the Author Alan J. Roxburgh is the President of the Missional Network (formerly Roxburgh Missional Network), which is "committed to resourcing missional leaders with the best training, consulting and hands-on resources for innovating missional life in local congregations and communities of faith." Previously he served in pastoral ministry for over twenty-five years. Read More …
Defining Success in Youth Ministry (#0313)
Danny Ferguson serves as an area director for YFC/Youth Unlimited, which is an expression of Youth for Christ International. Yesterday he wrote about what success looks like in youth ministry. Ferguson asked youth ministry leaders to provide "their 140 character definition of success" via Twitter and published several of those responses, including: Enabling young people to come alive in joy and to be everything they were made to be!! - that's an attempt!! – Read More …
Do you Attend a Living Church or a Dying Church? (#0312)
Sam Trumbore is a Unitarian Universalist (UUA) pastor who currently serves as minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany (New York). Previously, he was Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Charlotte County, Florida. Recently he wrote a piece contrasting the experiences of living churches with those of dying churches. This article was originally published in the newsletter of a Charlotte county church: Pilgrim United Church of Christ. More recently it Read More …
Observe then Engage: Youth Ministry 101 (#0311)
Brooklyn Lindsey is a pastor who currently oversees the middle school ministry at Highland Park Church in Lakeland, Florida and has recently written two books: Oppposite Day: Upside-Down Questions to Keep Students Talking and Listening (2009) and Confessions of a Not-So-Supermodel: Faith, Friends and Festival Queens (2008). She recently blogged about some advice she offered the leaders in her congregation who work with middle school students, which she suggests is helpful for those working Read More …
Nuclear Realities and Religious Responsibility (#0310)
Last week I attended Florida Gulf Coast University's annual Interfaith Clergy Seminar, which is organized by the university's Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Human Rights Studies. I have had the pleasure of attending this event three of the first four years it has been held. Each year I appreciate the intentional interaction with clergy of other faiths more than the previous year. While there has been a highly regarded speaker at each seminar, this was the first year that the Read More …
Will Talking by Phone Disappear? (#0309)
When I was a child people who wanted to talk to someone else either physically went where that person was or picked up a phone and called that person. The phone we used to place the call was either a home phone or a pay phone. In the 1980s it seemed every home had a phone and everywhere that was not a home had a pay phone. It was only when I was a teen in the early 1990s that I moved into the leading edge world of being able to be contacted without a phone. A beeper, Read More …
Social Media for Lent: Fast or Engage? (#0308)
Bruce Reyes-Chow is a forty-one year old Presbyterian (PCUSA) pastor who serves as founding pastor of Mission Bay Community Church, which primarily attracts young adults in their twenties and thirties. He served as the Moderator of the 218th General Assembly of the 2.3 million member PCUSA. Serving as the youngest person ever elected to that office, Reyes-Chow became a pioneer in the use of social media in the mainline Protestant world. To connect with Read More …
The Day Jesus Followed Me (#0307)
I remember just what I was doing the moment Jesus Christ followed me. Yesterday afternoon while I was watching Florida defeat UCLA in a basketball game, I received the following notification: So What? I find it interesting that the person who tweets as @JesusOfNaz316 has chosen to follow me (@sowhatfaith), especially since my bio there describes me as a "progressive postmodern postdenominational follower of Jesus." For those who wonder what this Twitter Jesus says, many of his Read More …
Face-to-Face vs. Digital/Virtual Worship (#0306)
Chuck Fromm has spent his life in the worship music business. Currently he is the publisher and founder of Worship Leader Magazine. Previously he served for twenty-five years as president of Marantha! Music, which he bought from his uncle Chuck Smith. His doctoral dissertation is titled Textual Communities and New Song in the Multi Media Age: The Routinization of Charisma in the Jesus Movement. In the March/April 2011 edition of Worship Leader Magazine, Fromm Read More …