By Amy Butler Has anybody out there noticed that church attendance has been lower lately? The church budget is stretched thin because fewer people are giving? You can’t get a commitment out of people who are so busy they are…
The end of the world as we know it
By Amy Butler Has anybody out there noticed that church attendance has been lower lately? The church budget is stretched thin because fewer people are giving? You can’t get a commitment out of people who are so busy they are…
The end of the world as we know it
By Amy Butler Has anybody out there noticed that church attendance has been lower lately? The church budget is stretched thin because fewer people are giving? You can’t get a commitment out of people who are so busy they are…
The end of the world as we know it
By Amy Butler Has anybody out there noticed that church attendance has been lower lately? The church budget is stretched thin because fewer people are giving? You can’t get a commitment out of people who are so busy they are…
Baptists and Episcopalians together?
In my book Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity, I suggested this as something that “ordinary Christians” can do locally to further the visible unity of the church: “If your own denomination has been in…official…
Shooting victim chooses forgiveness
By Amber Cassady From his hospital bed, one of the 58 people injured in a July 20 shooting rampage in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater that claimed 12 lives has become a spokesman for Christian forgiveness. Pierce O’Farrill, a member…
Receiving hospitality
Alan Roxburgh’s recent book, “Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood,” lead me to a different sort of reading of a recent Sunday Gospel lesson from Mark 6:1-13. Jesus goes into his own home town with his disciples, teaches in the…
Praying with the cat
No, that’s not a typo. Let me explain. I am the head of a not-so-blended family. I have two dogs, Oakley (my first dog ever) and Ralphie (adopted as a companion and best buddy for Oakley.) Although my older cats…
Our rhetorical Civil War
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861 So it was then, March, 4, 1861, that Lincoln uttered these words to a struggling, soon-to-be-divided United States. We hear these words 151…
What Fox says that the church doesn’t
In a postmodern, post-denominational, post-Christian, post-religious, post-everything world, the church has floundered on developing a consistent message to help transform culture. The church attempted to entertain – but not many twenty-somethings woke up to hear a bad guitarist sing shallow…
Competition or Communion?
For years my church struggled with what to do about Wednesday nights. Because we were largely a congregation of university students, the conventional wisdom was to do anything that involved a stage. Speakers, musicians, lights, observers sitting in rows of…
Don’t forsake the old hymns
By Bob Burroughs I am becoming very burdened about what I am seeing, feeling and experiencing in worship these days in many churches. Things are different, even unusual, and for a lot of people, very uncomfortable. One such area is…