Congregations across the country are struggling to remain, or even achieve, relevance in their communities. The struggle is just as difficult for seminaries seeking to serve those churches.
Baptist brokenness: Reconciliation and revolution
I am sick to death of decades of our ceaseless inability to avoid personal, spiritual and communal schism in our churches and ourselves. Truth to tell, however, 2,000 years of Christian history illustrate that the same Jesus Story that unites all Christ’s church often drives it apart. I’ve often teased that “Baptists multiply by dividing.” It’s not funny anymore. Never was.
At home in a foreign land
Last Sunday I taught a class at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., the second of a two-part conversation entitled, “Retelling the Jesus Story in a Post-Modern, Pluralistic, Post-Protestant-Privileged World: Who’s Listening?”The topic, sent in weeks earlier, was of…
Looking for the origin of decline in the U.S. church? Baptist historian thinks he may know the answer
Bill Leonard became fascinated with the topic of conversion early in his career, often teaching and preaching about the dramatic, and not-so-dramatic, ways Americans have become Christians throughout U.S. history. And by the early 1980s, Leonard said, the number of conversions,…
No Millennials in church? They may be working, expert says
Charging Millennials with rejecting church and being undisciplined givers doesn’t take into account the multitude of economic and social factors that characterize their lives.