A Houston megachurch has been in the news due to member concerns about the ways its bylaws were amended and governance was effectively removed from the congregation and entrusted to a small group handpicked by the senior pastor. While this...
And in a few weeks, Easter Sunday falls on April Fool’s Day. Yikes.
Two self-described survivors of the True Love Waits phenomenon have produced a series of podcasts exploring faith, sex and life in the wake of the evangelical “purity” movement.
The failure of a church, at least according to the belief system baked into our American religiosity, is the personal failure of a pastor. As I’ve seen more and more of my friends (and myself) self-immolate in the face of institutional malaise, I’ve been wondering if the problem for most of us clergy folk is rooted in something a bit more elemental than a lack of training in millennial worship preferences and successfully interacting with people on your church Facebook page.
I do not expect a denominational body to reinforce all aspects of my conscience any more than I expect a congregation to match my convictions in every way. Most people don’t expect a perfect match — just space to grow together. So I’m not bothered by a conviction that differs from mine. I am bothered by the centrality given to a conviction that makes no space.
Our congregation went through 18 months of intense study, prayer and dialogue about LGBTQ inclusion, and we have the scars to show for it. And we would have had scars regardless of which way the decision went. But we are better for choosing the good over the easy.
Pastors of at least two Cooperative Baptist Fellowship churches say they are reconsidering affiliation with the 1,800-church network in light of a decision by CBF leaders to relax, but not totally lift, a ban on hiring LBGTQ people.
The Catholic church risks damaging its moral authority and plunging its followers into confusion if the Vatican presses ahead with an with the Chinese government, a group of influential Catholics has warned.
By elevating and blindly submitting to a single-issue politic, Christians endorse corrupt and immoral leaders and opt into ideological hypocrisy to uphold it. The risk for Christians is the loss of all ability to think in nuanced ways. It forces black-and-white thinking that moralizes some politicians based on a single belief.
If Sunday and midweek attendance patterns are not going back to the 1950s, then every church should consider creative ways to engage people in the culture as it exists, not the culture in which our grandparents lived.
David Platt announced Feb. 12 that he will end his three-and-a-half-year tenure as president of the SBC International Mission Board to focus only his role as teaching pastor at a DC-area megachurch, a role he took on last year.
Jonathan Brooks was introduced to faith growing up in a Missionary Baptist church on Chicago’s Southside. But he met Jesus through Christian hip hop. “For me, it’s always been the fact that [hip-hop] was a voice for the marginalized and for the oppressed,” Brooks says. And the same, he adds, is true about God.
Bay View is for many an idyllic community, but a lawsuit will test its rule that only practicing Christians can own property
