John Chandler

My friend Bob Dale is a walking trend-spotter. Maybe it’s because his son is a professional futurist. Or because he’s written a zillion books on leadership. Or he is reading about five very different books at a time most weeks….

Jonah Lehrer’s book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, is a “popular science” approach to how we foster imaginative environments for complicated problem-solving. One, use groups—you need the friction of a variety of perspectives. But two, don’t brainstorm with a goofy, positive, “every-idea-is-great”…

My friend Jim Baucom gave me a copy of best-selling author Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works. The sleeve of the book promises “a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity.” Shattering the myth of muses, higher…

In our last column, we examined the trend of “movement thinking” by looking at Steve Addison’s, Movements That Change the World: Five Keys to Spreading the Gospel. One of Addison’s keys is “Contagious Relationships.” The author says that “movements spread…

A powerful and welcome trend today is the conversation about starting movements. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Seth Godin’s Tribes and Ori Brafman’s The Starfish and the Spider have electrified and mainstreamed this topic. A movement is an informal grouping…

Recently, I was part of a conversation with 10 pastors discussing discipleship. All agreed that their churches were producing exactly what they were engineered to produce: attenders. There’s nothing wrong with attending church. You just can’t say attending church automatically…

Geoff Surratt of Seacoast Church in South Carolina recently wrote on “The Five Scariest Trends that Could Shipwreck the Church.” John Chandler Indicating a “minor prophet-ish mood,” he warned of the dangers of a “Reformed Revolution,” “Planting Pandemic,” “Multisite Mania”…

What will the next 10 years of the North American church will look like? We’ve learned from people like Alan Hirsch and Philip Jenkins to look to the global South for megatrends, and to Western Europe for early indicators for…

What is trending from the pulpit?  Here are three current indications that might inform your preaching. 1. Charismatic leadership wanes; transformational leadership waxes. John Chandler By “charismatic,” I don’t mean Pentecostal theology, but charisma-fueled ability to captivate large groups. In a…

  1. “Oikos” grows. As Millenniels pass Boomers as the largest generation, LifeWay Research indicates that top priority among the Millennial generation is family. With the disintegration of nuclear family in North American life through proliferating divorce, extended family or…

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…

Recently, the Rainer Research Group released a futurist study on what they believe to be 10 unexpected trends in church-life by the year 2020 (www.churchexecutive.com). In coming issues, I want to explore a few of those trends.  John Chandler Heterogeneity…