The past three decades brought a proliferation of where congregations assemble in the United States. What can we expect in the coming decade? 1. Increasing importance of church buildings. John Chandler “Here is the church, here is the steeple; open…
LEADERSHIP LINK: Larry Leader watches and learns
t all started with a Yogi Berra quote, of all things. After another long day on the job, Larry Leader is watching a little TV. His small construction business is beginning to pick up again but finding new jobs feels…
LEADERSHIP LINK: Churches lost $1.2 billion in recession
WASHINGTON (RNS)—Even as membership remains relatively stable in U.S. churches, the effects of the recession have caused contributions to drop by $1.2 billion. According to the 2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, the almost $29 billion contributed by church…
LEADERSHIP LINK: Getting to the core of a church budget
Baptists are starting a ministry for this, a committee for that, and taking a missions trip here or there. It all looks good—but in the end, finance committees are crunching the numbers and, whoops—the money isn’t there. Again. “Churches lack…
OUT LOUD
“If you don’t love America, if you don’t like the way we do things, I have one thing to say—get out! We don’t worship Buddha … we don’t worship Muhammad, we don’t worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God’s…
LEADERSHIP LINK: Report says church giving on the rebound
WASHINGTON (RNS)—The recession and a sluggish recovery have made for a lighter collection plate in recent years, but a new study shows that giving to U.S. congregations bounced back in 2011 as the economy improved. According to the fourth annual…
OPINION: Diversity, unity and reconciliation
“God bless you if you do, God help you if you don’t.” These words came as a challenge from Neville Callam, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance during his Friday sermon at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina’s…
VITAL SIGNS: The rise of church discipline
Have you noticed our tendency to try and control others with rules? We started with Ten Commandments. That led to Jewish scholars noting that the Torah actually contains 613 commandments, which can be divided into 365 “negative commandments,” and 248…
LETTER: Mired in cultural perceptions
One of the cultural perceptions in which we are mired in the 21st century is that we are superior to those who have gone before. That comes across in your opinion column in the March 5 issue [“Politics as usual?”]….
WINN RECOMMENDS
First Corinthians, Richard Hays (WJK) Hays is best known as an ethicist, penning the now classic Moral Vision of the New Testament. With this volume, however, Hays brings his ethical vision to the task of interpreting I Corinthians, a biblical…
LETTER: Concern about speaker
At first I thought the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia had an ad on your back page about a leadership conference [March 5], but it says Virginia Baptist Mission Board. I lived through the “Baptist Wars,” and my jugular is…
HERITAGE: A famous shootout and the Baptists
It has been exactly 100 years since the infamous shootout on March 14, 1912, involving the Allen family at the Carroll County Courthouse in Hillsville, Va., in which five persons were killed. It happened in the packed courtroom immediately after…