UPDATED 11 May (see below) 10 May 2013 (see below) Original Post 6 May 2013 So I Googled “redeeming the city” and produced 5 million results. The first link, from 2006, captures the spirit and the rhetoric of the movement. The writer . . . Continue reading →
Introduction: What Do You Want? I spent an encouraging evening with a enthusiastic group of young people at pastor’s house recently. Over dinner we discussed the challenges of planting Reformed Churches. We agreed that whatever we do we need to be strategic, we . . . Continue reading →
The confessional Reformed churches face many struggles. In Recovering the Reformed Confession I classified some of them under two headings, QIRC and QIRE, the quests for illegitimate religious certainty and experience. There are others. We are still playing Whack-a-mole with the Federal . . . Continue reading →
For years we drove past this old, abandoned church just north of I-80 near Milford, Nebraska. It was always a lonely vista but it was just one among many. I have often wondered about it, briefly, as we have driven west from . . . Continue reading →
A faithful HB reader wrote to ask about a good problem. His confessional Reformed congregation is growing. The question is how to proceed? Should the congregation expand the building or seek to establish new daughter congregations? Below is my reply. § It . . . Continue reading →
David Fitch says and assumes, “yes,” but I doubt it. The “missional” movements are not really fundamentally different from the middle-class, pedestrian “church growth” movements of 25 years ago. They all seem to assume that accommodation is something that we do as . . . Continue reading →
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lutheran Baby Boomer, Hi. Sir. Ma’am. I hear you say a lot of things about people my age in the church, people 30 and under. I hear you say them and I really am listening–mostly–but in my head, . . . Continue reading →
One of the hottest restaurants in my hometown of Chicago is Next. Chef Grant Achatz’s first restaurant, Alinea, has three Michelin stars and is regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world. Achatz wanted his second restaurant, Next, to be . . . Continue reading →
The Telegraph (UK) has a story about a flamenco-dancing priest in Spain. According to the story Fr. Pepe is wildly popular and especially with the ladies. They love it when, as part of the mass, he dances the flamenco. It’s no . . . Continue reading →
My Papa (Grandpa) was a great handyman. It seemed as if he could fix just about anything. He always brought his tools when he visited and we often had work for him to do. I remember the first time he said to . . . Continue reading →
…it should, I think, be made much harder than it now is to enter the Church: the confession of faith that is required should be a credible confession; and if it becomes evident upon examination that a candidate has no notion of . . . Continue reading →
This morning I saw what I thought was a promising headline: “Confessions of a Former ‘It’ Church Pastor” (HT: Aquila Report). My first thought: “Great! This will be an account of a pastor who woke up one day and realized that the . . . Continue reading →
The church growth movement has been one of the more influential movements in modern evangelicalism for the last 40 years. Pastors receive a steady stream of emails and advertisements promising to “grow the church” if only his congregation will buy this product or service. In some quarters it is unquestioned dogma, it is axiomatic that if the church is not growing numerically it is failing in its mission. Continue reading →
For far too many American and global Christians, the “prosperity gospel” is all they know of Christianity. For far too many Christians what the Scriptures actually teach about the law and the gospel is almost entirely unknown. Their leaders and influences are . . . Continue reading →
35 years ago, when I began seminary, the “church growth” movement was hitting its stride. In a course taught by an adjunct professor with a Harvard MBA we were taught how be efficient just the way successful CEOs are. Later, in the . . . Continue reading →
(HT: Presbycast)
The rulers of the church began to think that the glory of it consisted in its numbers, finding both their own power, veneration, and revenue increased thereby. In a short time, the inhabitants of whole cities and provinces, upon a bare, outward . . . Continue reading →
More than a decade ago I noted on the HB that one of the dominant stories in American Christianity in the last 25 years has been the rise of the “megachurch.” According to a recent study published in June, 2009, in USA . . . Continue reading →
Through a good part of redemptive history, certainly since the inauguration of the Old Covenant (c. 16th century BC) there were three offices in the church: prophet (Deut 18:15–22), priest (Deut 18:1–14; 33:8–11), and king (1 Sam 8:19–22). The Old Testament prophets spoke God’s Word to the Old Testament national church and to the OT church in exile. The priests received the offerings of the people and mediated for them to God, and made the appointed offerings on behalf of the people. The kings succeeded the judges and ruled Israel or Israel and Judah) until the exile. Continue reading →
Presbyterian and Reformed congregations occupy an odd space in American Christianity. We do not really belong to American Christianity in significant ways. Our roots are not in the nineteenth-century revivals nor even in the eighteenth-century revivals. We are no part of the . . . Continue reading →