Church
Learning To Follow Jesus Outside Church Walls
I was raised in a home where regular, frequent attendance of church services was the norm. I was in church by the time I was just a week old, and I attended faithfully from that point forward. It was just a…
Conquering Co-Dependency & Consumerism In Church Culture
Those churches that sprang from American soil have avoided certain aspects of the feudal model, but unfortunately many have been co-opted by another system. Whereas Constantine poured the early Christian movement into the mold of Roman patronage, many American…
Why We Want Religious Systems More Than The Gospel
It was easy to speak boldly that my ministry was all about faithfulness to God and His Word. But when humility gave birth to brutal honesty, I freely began to admit that there was undoubtedly this constant undercurrent of…
How Consumer Church Wears Everyone Out
I wonder if the American church is setting itself up for failure? If church structure— which is geared toward meeting every need, developing everyone spiritually and organizing all inward and outward ministry — results in a 90 percent failure…
The Irrelevance Of Relevant Christianity
Do people want Christianity to be cool? What happens when churches become too driven by the desire to be trend-savvy and culturally relevant? Can a church balance hipster credibility within an orthodox tradition? Further time will tell whether the…
Sunday Sermon: How The Church Builds The City
It’s been a while since we had a Sunday Sermon post. Today, we have Rick McKinley sharing a vision for how the church makes the city and displays the gospel through its participation in being and building the…
The Church Got Lost In Translation
In 1525, one of the first people to translate the Bible into English, William Tyndale, translated the word ekklesia as congregation. However, in 1611 the translators of the King James Version of the Bible chose to completely drop the Greek meaning of ekklesia and to…
Why Kid’s Church Should Be Uninvented
Nothing like a little satire to point out the flaws of something. This clever little video uses the genius of satire to expose the questionable assumptions behind children’s church and/or Sunday school. Perhaps the cons of age-segregated worship outweigh…
The Only Decision That Matters
People are no more lost now than they have ever been, and Jesus is no less Lord now than He will ever be. We dare not cower in our churches as though God has lost anything. The only decision handed…
Why New Testament Believers Didn’t Have Worship Leaders
You’ll see Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Evangelists, and Pastors but you won’t find hide nor hair of a worship leader. Being a full time worship leader I had a bit of an identity crises when I flipped through the pages…
Churchianity And The Dones
Churchianity: a mirage (of the kingdom of God taught and exemplified by Jesus as unfolded in the New Testament) that is always forming both near and around the new covenant community of Jesus by perpetual, generational layers of religious…
Maintain Unity And The Bond Of Peace
“I have never yet known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord’s people were divided.” Like D.L. Moody, neither have I. Instead, most of us probably have seen too often how disunity hinders the Spirit’s work in the church and damages…
A Profile Of “The Dones”
There is a growing population of people who are “done with church.” They are appropriately known as “The Dones.” They are done with the trappings that come along with “doing church” or “playing church” these days. They are NOT…
Welcoming Makes Well
“Whoever welcomes this little child in My name welcomes Me” (Luke 9:48). “Welcome” is a biblical word rich with a rich meaning. It is more than a smile and a handshake. It is more than what happens during the “welcome and…
The Church Should Embrace Sex Offenders
For over a decade, Sonrise Church’s Light My Way program has been ministering to society’s most downtrodden people. Ex-cons, prostitutes, meth addicts, the impoverished, and the homeless are all welcome at the church’s modern nine-acre campus. What really makes Light…
The Feudal System Lives On In Church Culture
A strange conversation can be heard in most church parking lots on most Sundays. It goes like this; “Did you get fed this week?” “Yes I did, I loved what the pastor had to say.” Or perhaps; “Did you…
How The Church Can Help Heal The Abuser And The Abused
In more than a decade of research, almost every article I’ve come across addressing sex offenders in church communities reveals pastors and leaders focusing exclusively on the sex offenders—the theological grounds for their presence, the church’s obligation to care…
How To Raise Godly Kids Without Going To Church
According to Scripture, it is the parent’s responsibility to raise up their children and teach them about God, but our modern way of doing church relinquishes these things to 45 minutes on Sunday morning and Wednesday night, in a…
Is Ministry For The Professionals Or The Body?
Pastors are under a lot of pressure. In most churches today, we employ one person (or a small team) to do the job of many. The Bible tells us that God “ordained some to be apostles, some to be…
How Church Life Can Be Both Organic & Organized
Caesar Kalinowski offers practical tips on how the ideas of “organic” and “organized” apply to life in a community of Christians. These terms are often spoken of as binary opposites, but Caesar points out how both are needed for…
ISIS Beheaded 21 People Of The Cross But The Story Isn’t Over Yet
When the day is done and last of the lights are turned out and my head hits the pillow, all I can think of is the faces of The 21 and their surrendered heads, their heads carrying the full…
False Doctrine Doesn’t Make You A Heretic, Divisiveness Does
So, in the New Testament sense of the word, “heresy” was the creation of a division, a sect, a faction, or a party. For this reason, the author of Acts uses the word to describe the different sects within…
Worshiptainment: The Bane Of The Church
The great heresy of the church today is that we think we’re in the entertainment business. A.W. Tozer believed this to be true back in the 1950s and 60s. Church members “want to be entertained while they are edified.”…
Church’s Confusion About Its Identity Leads To Confusion About How To Belong
Sometimes the world can feel overwhelming, especially among the younger people of my generation. There’s a really deep need to find our place in it. But it’s often the case that the institutions that used to broker connections—institutions like…
Men Are Sick Of Feminized Faith
The dominant narrative at the moment is that, while church attendance is down across the board, men in particular are staying home on Sunday mornings. And while there has been much hand-wringing over this reality, there has, to my knowledge,…
Jesus Never Told Us To Plant Churches
We have a poor understanding of the local church. We operate from a poor definition of church planter. We have a poor understanding of our Commission. We act as if Jesus has commanded us to plant churches. We are commanded to…
God Loves A Cheerful Tither, Right?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair Does the Bible teach us to tithe? Are we spiritually obligated to fund the pastor and his…
C.S. Lewis Did Not Like Church
The idea of churchmanship was to be wholly unattractive. I was not in the least anticlerical, but I was deeply antiecclesiastical. It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how…
Demolishing The Clergy/Laity Distinction
According to the New Testament, there is no clergy/laity distinction. Instead, all Christians are kleros (clergy) and all Christians are laos(laity). The clergy/laity dichotomy is a tragic fault line that runs throughout the history of Christendom. The New Testament doesn’t…
What Would Happen If We Let Jesus Lead The Church?
Pastor Challenge 2015 — Step aside and let the living Jesus lead at least 1 Sunday morning church meeting all by Himself. Here’s how: Begin by reading 1 Corinthians 14:26 to the congregation from a microphone on the floor…
Why Believers Be Leaving
There are many Christians who have stopped going to church. They have not given up on God, have not renounced their faith, have not denied Christ, and have not become pagans. They simply are no longer going to church.…
How To Criticize Church
There comes a point in the journey of every Christian where cynicism starts to look inviting. Even mature. But there’s a difference between looking for ways to make the Church better and looking for things to complain about. Mature,…
The Real And Raw Reasons Why People Are Leaving Church
Hey Church, you may think you know why people are leaving you, but I’m not sure you do. You think it’s because “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all walking away. You believe that they’ve…
Sunday Sermon: The Cross Reconciles Us To God AND To One Another
Is not the mission of God to see people not only reconciled to God, but also diverse groups reconciled to each other? In this video Leonce Crump challenges us to pursue racial reconciliation in light of the…
Why People Are Disillusioned With Church | Jeff Vanderstelt
Jeff Vanderstelt articulates why people are disillusioned and disappointed with church these…
Being The Right Church Is Better Than Griping About The Wrong Church
A very popular phrase I hear is that we are the church. So I would encourage you, if you are dissatisfied with an aspect of your church (not including faulty doctrine, of course) rather than trying to find the…
4 Bad Reasons For Joining A Church
Like many in my generation, I’ve done some moving around and with each new move I’ve had to begin the difficult process of searching for a new church home. If you’re like most, a day is coming when you…
Finding Community In A Consumer Culture
Community is core to the Christian faith. From the very beginning, fellowship and life together have characterized Christ’s disciples. But the centrality of Christian community to the church doesn’t mean that it’s easy—nor does it mean it always looks…
Sunday Sermon: Children Are An Integral Part Of A Worship Gathering
Rob Rienow explains why children should be involved in the gathering of the saints for worship. Believe it or not, this was actually the norm for millennia. It’s only in the last century or so that we had the…
Busting 5 Myths About The Neighborhood Church
As followers of Jesus seek God’s renewal of the neighborhoods they inhabit, as they begin to discern how to be the church together in everyday life, it’s inevitable that myths will arise. Here are five myths I’ve already discovered…
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