John Shelby Spong served as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. In retirement, he has been a prolific writer and speaker. He concluded a recent essay outlining his thoughts on the future of Christianity with these words: The problems facing institutional Christianity today in the Western world cannot be addressed by tinkering around the edges of our theological formularies or structures . . . We are not today in a temporary Read More …
denominations
The Women Preached it First (#0356)
The United Church of Christ‘s Still Speaking Campaign is the most well-known marketing campaign undertaken by a mainline denomination in recent years. The campaign started in 2004 with television ads, which can be viewed here. In April 2010, the campaign moved online with an ad designed to spread via social media called The Language of God (read my thoughts) and continued with Uniquely UCC (read my thoughts). For Easter, the new ad, The Women Read More …
Returning to Parish Ministry (#0333)
After my first time away from parish ministry since the early days of seminary, I will be returning to that role effective May 1 when I assume the role of Director of Adult Education at Naples United Church of Christ. Some of my regular readers may be familiar with that name as I have written several times about my volunteer leadership experiences in this community of faith, especially in leading worship (i.e. sermon manuscript or other recent materials: 1, 2, 3, 4). Read More …
Theology and the Church After Google (#0299)
"Theology and the Church After Google: How This New Age Will Change Christianity" is both an article about how theology is shifting and must continue to change as well as an example of such change. It is written by an academic (Philip Clayton, Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Claremont Graduate University and Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology) and was published in an academic journal (The Princeton Theological Review), however, it now appears online in its Read More …
A Prayer for Christian Unity (#0250)
Modernity provided an ideal framework for denominational growth (we now count denominations by the tens of thousands). I am hopeful that postmodernity will provide an opportunity to move from fragmentation toward unity. There are encouraging signs all around from the way postmoderns engage one another and experience religion to the reform underway or being discussed by multiple denominations. So What? A Prayer for Christian Unity God of Many Names, may this new era we are naming Read More …
Vision & Strategy Trends (#0232)
Will Mancini is the founder of Auxano – a church consulting group with a unique approach to developing a church’s vision frame before providing traditional consulting services. He is the author of Church Unique: How Mission Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement (read my review here). Mancini's first blog post of 2011 is packed with relevant information about trends in vision and strategy for churches. He sees eleven trends for 2011 and beyond: Read More …
Megachurches Shaping American Protestantism (#0144)
Leadership Network just released their bi-annual Large Church Salary and Benefits Report, which explores the results of their latest survey of many of the largest Protestant churches in America and Canada. For the purpose of the research "large churches" are those with 1000+ in average weekly worship attendance while "megachurch" status is reserved for those with 2000+ in weekly worship attendance. For those interested in more details, the full 31 page Read More …