Prosperity Gospel is Neither
John Piper on “Prosperity Gospel”
10 Ways To Insult and Disrespect Churchgoers
It’s been a while since I first wrote about the numerous ways churches thwarted my efforts to discover them. I thought it was time for an update and so I’ve decided to share 10 ways pastors/churches insult churchgoers and the cities they are called to serve. I’ve experienced all 10 of these first-hand and some are more serious than others. My intent is to simply offer insight to the many pastors out there who always welcome a visitor’s perspective. So don’t take it too personally, unless of course I happen to be talking about your church, in which case I’m so sorry you made the list.
So here you have it, 10 Ways to Insult and Disrespect Churchgoers: Read more
How Do You Know That You Believe?
Paul Washer on False Hope
How Not to Build Community at Church
It seems that 10 Ways to Keep Me From Discovering Your Church inspired Adam at AskingY to take a look at ways in which individuals keep from building community in the church. While my article focused on ways the church thwarts visitors, Adam’s takes on ways that individuals thwart making connections.
Regrettably, I think at different times I’ve been guilty of every single item on this list. Are you holding back community?
Here’s the first five…
- Keep Conversations Short
- Always sit in your “assigned” seat
- Avoid New People
- Come in Late
- Leave immediately after the service (or early)
See the rest of the list and Adam’s commentary at 10 Ways to Avoid Building Community Within the Church .
Can you love a mess? A life depends on it.
I’m a messy individual. Both figuratively and literally. I miss hosting a small group for various reasons, one of which is that it required me to thoroughly clean my apartment on a weekly basis. Now the wrath of my roommate/landlord helps to motivate me, except he’s not all that scary. My life is also messy and my past is even messier.
I want to let you in on a little secret; I’m a sinner. I know, you’re shocked. It indeed pains me to shatter your pristine perception of me, but it’s true. I sin frequently; daily; probably hourly. Most days I break the law by Read more
10 Ways to Draw Me to Your Church
In response to my 10 Ways to Keep Me from Discovering Your Church, Church Redone reader Andy Raffalski sent in a list of 10 ways to draw someone to a church. I’ve included his list below (in bold) along with my comments. Read more
Guest Speakers Gone Wild
A lot of first-time church visitors don’t pay much attention to guest speakers for various reasons:
- It doesn’t tell them much about the regular pastor
- The service flow and timing can be quite different than normal
- There may also be a guest worship team
- The visit may not benefit them in determining much about the church
The bottom line is that visitors usually need to attend a 2nd week to really learn anything useful about what a normal Sunday is like. Most people just won’t even bother to try again; first impressions and all that.
However, I believe that guest speakers can be very beneficial for church visitors (and even regular attenders). They have certainly been helpful to me. This past week, for the 2nd time in as many years, I walked out on a church service because of the guest speaker. Each time I was a relatively new visitor to the church. Both times were my last visit to that church. These speakers saved me a lot of time. Here’s why… Read more
10 Ways to Keep Me from Discovering Your Church
I’m now a few weeks into looking for a new fellowship body and I’ve come up against many barriers that churches have in place to keep me from easily finding or connecting with them. There are a couple local churches that have completely vexed my efforts to learn more about them and after 2 weeks and several hours of effort, I’ve stopped trying to reach them. The reality is most people, myself included, are probably not going to attend your church if they can’t find any information about it beforehand. Other churches I’ve managed to find and attend, only to be thwarted in my efforts to learn more or get connected. This is all part of what I call church discoverability, which includes initially hearing about a church, learning more, first attending and initial connecting.
So if your church’s goal is to make it painfully difficult to be discovered by new people, here are 10 real ways I’ve experienced that churches keep from being discovered: Read more
A Distant and Diplomatic Love
In Matthew 25 Jesus lays down the mandate for His followers to feed, hydrate, welcome, clothe, nurse and visit the poor, afflicted and imprisoned.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.‘
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Jesus goes on to tell the “righteous” who call him “Lord“, but do none of these things, they “are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Up until recently the thing that was most striking to me about this story was that the cursed proclaimed Jesus as Lord. They are even called “the righteous”. We see this clearly explained to us in James 2 and the mantra that “faith without works is dead“.
But what may be even more striking is the personal nature of the mandate. Read more
From Contempt to Compassion
More often than not, my growth in Christ-likeness has been a slow, almost indiscernible process. It is like losing weight in that the day-to-day or even week-to-week changes are not really noticeable, but then a year down the road you look into the mirror and a different person is looking back. Sometimes realization just smacks you in the face about how your heart has changed. I had one such moment this past week. Read more