With 58% of parents choosing their current church based on the children’s ministry, there is a lot of pressure on churches to get it right. But what does it mean to get it right? Do churches need to have a children’s wing on par with the local indoor adventure park? Or a talented graphic designer …
Continue...A year ago, as we headed into weeks and months of pandemic lockdown, children’s ministry leaders were in survival mode, scrambling for ideas on how to equip their teams to minister to children from a distance. As we saw the end of pandemic restrictions on the horizon, many lifted their gaze and began to explore …
Continue...Recently, I had the opportunity to read A Big Gospel in Small Places: Why Ministry in Forgotten Communities Matters by Stephen Witmer. Witmer (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) serves as pastor of Pepperell Christian Fellowship in Pepperell, Massachusetts, a small town about an hour northwest of Boston. As Christian ministries and churches increasingly focus on urban …
Continue...It was 2005. I was a farm boy who found himself pastoring a church in the center of a major city. I had no idea what I was doing. Another pastor I knew had just returned from a church planting conference at which he heard some guy speak and gave me the 23-page handout. “Nathan, you’ve got to read this! This is all about …
Continue...Andrew Peterson was a young musician when he posted a message board comment to one of his favorite bands, Cademon’s Call, with a link to his lyrics. This spontaneous act set off a long spiral of events that have shaped him and led him to his vocation as a musician. His story has been anything …
Continue...After Christ’s apostles, no sinful human being has exerted greater influence on the heart and mind of the church than Augustine of Hippo (354-430 B.C.). Over the last century, scholars have argued that Western church history is, technically speaking, Augustinian. Carl Truman insists, “as all medieval theology was to some extent a dialogue with Augustine, …
Continue...Every pastor who loves Jesus and his Church wants the church he leads to grow. After all, Jesus made it clear that he came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), to build his Church (Matt. 16:18), and to lead his followers to become fishers of men (Mark 1:17). Before he ascended to …
Continue...Even as a child, I was fascinated by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Where I lived, it was the only regular religious programming on television, and on it, I found a tawdry mix of the familiar and the different. It was commonplace in the sense that several of the preachers were preaching end-times sermons with big …
Continue...Americans still pride themselves on their independence. But what if our individualism has distorted what Christ meant for the church? Joseph H. Hellerman, a professor of New Testament and a pastor of a local church, believes American individualism has infected our understanding of what a church is supposed to be and how a church is …
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