By Vicki Brown You’ve been a member of the same church for a few years. While you may not know everyone in the congregation well, you are acquainted with most folks in your Sunday school class. One Sunday morning you…
“Show Me the Money” No Longer Works When Denominations Talk to Churches
Rather than a Jerry Maguire demand of “show me the money,” denominations often find themselves asking “where has all the money gone?” Depending on the denomination, funds to denominations began declining between 30 and 50 years ago. However, it took…
Churches less inclined to look to denominations for resources
By George Bullard It is no longer true that denominations provide a majority of the resources needed by many of their congregations. It has been at least a quarter of a century or longer since many denominations in North America…
This kind of denomination is dead
By George Bullard Anyone who has followed my lifelong trek through the maze of denominational staff service and consulting and coaching with denominational organizations knows that I believe in denominations. I also believe they have a future that respects their…
This kind of denomination IS dead
Anyone who has followed my lifelong trek through the maze of denominational staff service, and consulting and coaching with denominational organizations, knows that I believe in denominations. I also believe they have a future that respects their past and present….
Great Commission and Great Commandment without synergy?
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001? I do too. That is a morning very difficult to forget. I was sitting in the lobby restaurant of a hotel in…
Name changes challenge churches on Baptist identity
By Jeff Brumley Over the weekend, Virginia Heights Baptist Church in Roanoke, Va., plunged headlong into a continuing, decades-long trend in American Christianity by dropping the denominational reference from its name. So when Nelson Harris showed up for work Monday…
Circle of life: Denominational innovation may be wave of future
By Jeff Brumley The fact state and national religious bodies are undergoing significant changes — or at least need to change — hardly makes headlines anymore. But the changes already occurring give hints about where the development of religious organizations…
Are Millennials different than Baby Boomers 40 years ago?
Back in the 1970s a lot of congregational prognosticators warned that the Church, in general, was in the process of losing a whole demographic generation known as Baby Boomers. Existing congregations, new congregations, and denominational approaches to ministry were losing…