How do we create communities which form the likeliest context for an unchurched person to embrace Jesus and his movement? While churches today often get tied up in many different things, this should be the question that drives them harder than…
OPINION: The art of doing nothing
The art of being busy is not art at all. It is illusion — movement masked as purpose, distracting one’s audience from realizing that there is not much going on at all. The real art, the difficult, lost, and hard…
OPINION: Creating contexts for conversion, part 1
What is the likeliest context in which someone who is not currently a Jesus follower will take up such a journey? This is the question readily apparent and to which several answers were given at a recent conference I had…
OPINION: Why things break apart and how they get back together
“A few years ago, researchers completed the most meticulous survey ever made of the San Andreas Fault. They found detailed features that nobody could have seen before. “ (Headline from Earth and Science, December 2005) Everyone agrees: it’s just a…
LEADERSHIP LINK: Church staffs need to pray more and play more
I don’t have a study to back up my assumption that church staff members need to pray more, but based on my own observations I feel comfortable making the assertion. As Yogi Berra is credited with saying, “You can observe…
OPINION: The day the world became Catholic
A few weeks ago my wife and I, along with a good friend and fellow North Carolina Baptist minister, traveled together for a much needed vacation along the Atlantic. When ministers get together, the conversation rarely leaves the genre of…
OPINION: Church cats and starter kids
It was a cold late afternoon in downtown Winston-Salem, and I was sitting down for a late lunch meeting at a local Irish pub, Finnegan’s Wake. As I was waiting for my lunch companion, I pulled out my computer and…
OPINION: Easter faith and ‘establishment’ of religion
It was April Fool’s Day when I first heard about the bill that some North Carolina representatives authored asserting “that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an…
Matt Cook
Easter Faith and “Establishment” of Religion Matt Cook It was April Fool’s Day when I first heard about the bill that some North Carolina representative authored asserting “that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states…