Samuel Loncar on Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future? He even looks like a prophet. Well, how a prophet might look like in the digital age. Jaron Lanier, technologist and computer scientist, cannot be mistaken for a small man in…
How to bring dignity to firing church staff
Firing staff is never a pleasant experience. No one (except maybe Donald Trump on television) looks forward to telling a person that they now have to find another job. Firing people in an organization or church is often met with…
RIP, average attendance
Average worship attendance was once such an important number. With it, I could predict the size of the church staff, the informal patterns of decision-making, most of the stresses on the pastor’s time, the leadership required for small groups, and…
One millennial’s response to the recent Pew Research findings
My name is Seth Vopat, I am a husband and father of two boys, who happens to work in ministry as well. At age 33, I belong to the millennial generation which continues to make headline news. I continue to…
A modest proposal for future patriotic celebrations
Memorial Day is approaching. Students are looking forward to “warming-up” for summer vacation, and families are anticipating weekend festivities around beaches, swimming pools, and backyard grills. American flags will be prominently displayed, and most U.S. citizens at least intend to…
How do we get along when there’s no middle ground? Part 2
In part one I told you the story of a couple of gay New York hoteliers who met with Ted Cruz and were treated as a result to calls for a boycott and other harassments. This situation prompted me to…
God’s knows the heart of single adults. Do you?
Recently a ministry acquaintance posted a very personal statement on Facebook about her life as a single adult and an affirmation of her worth and value as a person of worth created in the image of God to live and…
Healthy beginnings matter for pastor search process
In a recent training event for congregational conflict interventionists, one of our CHC team members heard Richard Blackburn, a Lombard Peace Center trainer, say this: “When I look into the history of churches I go into for a conflict intervention,…
God’s Funeral
Although I don’t know that he said anything about a funeral, perhaps the best known statement about God’s demise was made by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who declared “God is dead” in his 1882 book “The Gay Science” (with “gay” being…