To begin with, we didn’t make enough bulletins for the large crowd that attended. So, 3 minutes before the service began, I found myself in the church office running off additional bulletins while simultaneously putting my clergy robe on, hooking…
ABHMS gets $1.25 million Lilly grant
American Baptist Home Mission Societies has received a $1.25 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative. Over five years, grant funds will help ABHMS establish and execute its Nurturing Children Initiative, a…
Why children are behaving differently at church after the pandemic
It is now June 2024, and we are four years away from the beginning of the COVID-19 experience in the United States. But the ripple effects of the pandemic are still being felt in church children’s ministries. As an educator…
‘Bless your heart; you don’t get worship’
Here is a helpful phrase for ministers to think, but not say, “Bless your heart; you don’t get worship.” For instance, when someone says, “I’m making the announcement about the party. I’m using ventriloquist puppets.” A kind minister thinks, “Bless…
What worshiping with other people does to you
Recently, I had the opportunity to sing in a choir behind praise and worship leader Charity Gayle at one of her concerts. What I experienced was beyond my expectations and I learned more than I imagined. My church choir was…
On the other side of the pandemic, the report from America’s churches is mixed
Increases in attendance, giving and participation, and a decline in internal squabbling, may signal America’s churches are emerging from the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, new research shows. But the study — “Back to Normal? The…
A church shopper’s guide to finding the right church for you
If I were trying to find a church in which to invest myself I would be a very careful shopper. Sure, I would pay some attention to the name on the sign (Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, etc.), but not too much….
Making peace with my internal worship war
Walter “Buddy” Shurden is an esteemed historian who taught at Carson-Newman University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Mercer University. In a series of lectures in 1980, Shurden described two broad streams of practice in Baptist churches he labels the Sandy…
Appealing to religious freedom is the way to counter Christian supremacism in America today
Christian supremacism has gotten completely out of hand in the United States. We’ve seen it in the insurrection warfare of the New Apostolic Reformation, the battle against librarians by the likes of Kirk Cameron, the desire to punish homosexuality by Al Mohler, Dan…