Children’s Sermons RE: Oklahoma Tornadoes

mooretornado

As stories of devastation emerge from Moore, Oklahoma, and the surrounding areas hit by the Tornadoes on May 20th, while first responders and support networks continue their recovery work, while families await knowledge of the fate of their homes or loved ones, while people who are not there read and watch in horror…there’s also a [...]

Nitpicking Mark 5 in the Common English Study Bible #CEB

demoniac

It’s not always nice to nitpick, but when it comes to the Bible, I feel a certain obligation. After all, my schooling was in the Bible, I use the Bible every day, so if not a resident theologian like myself, who will do the nitpicking? My nitpick addresses the release of the Common English Bible’s [...]

The Creed is Freeing? [worship.hack]

flickr_lecturn

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of hanging out with a church planter who does lots of missional church behind-the-scenes work: getting to know the community, the people, the needs, and the aspirations…and allowing those factors to dictate what the church looks like. And what she told me shocked me. She told me of [...]

The difficulty with social media and worship

microphone

I have led social media workshops in the past for churches and I’ve been commissioned to lead a series of them for my new district in the Fall. But I have a problem. One of the requested areas of conversation for one coming up is “social media and worship.” We’ve seen those things before. Parishioners [...]

Progress in a Middle Direction

progressinamiddledirection

  If you like the Hacking Christianity Facebook page, then you get easy access to relevant images and links along with the blog posts–Like this one above! It’s a quote from E. Stanley Jones, a United Methodist missionary theologian. Here’s the full quote:  ”The conservative is a necessary element in human society. Without him we [...]

Follow Your Passion on Nights and Weekends

cannon-beach

The Onion is a satirical website that posts some really offensive stuff, but they often post some spot-on critiques of the human condition. Case in point is the March 20th post “Find the Thing You Are Most Passionate About” (NSFW language) which talks ironically about following your passion, but outside of the demeaning work-week. I [...]

For Churches, What Differentiates Blogs, Social Media, and Email

problogger

Darren Rowse, @problogger on Twitter and blogger at ProBlogger.com, posted the above update earlier this week and I thought it was succinct enough to share. And succinct enough that it needed some pointers for local churches or ministries that could use the distinction. Blogging is for Content Use the church blog or website to display [...]

Children’s Sermons RE: Newtown Tragedy

Attached is actually a rewrite of “Children’s Sermons RE: Haiti” back when the earthquake occured (with one more written specifically for the Newtown tragedy). I write this for clergy/children’s ministers who choose to confront and talk about the school shooting (although some may choose not to talk about it as parents tend to shield their [...]

The #UMC in the False Proxy Trap

Numbers And Finance

No Church Left BehindMy friend Rob Rynders (clergyperson in Phoenix, AZ) pointed me towards the following short essay by author and blogger Seth Godin (author of Tribes which is popular in some church circles). I’m going to post the biggest part of it to spark discussion. Godin writes: Sometimes, we can’t measure what we need, so we invent [...]

Rob Bell: Church is a double-edged sword

Rob Bell on the Church (book source unknown, Velvet Elvis, thanks Jeff Lutz!): “She’s a mystery, isn’t she? Still going after all this time. After the Crusades and the Inquisition and Christian cable television. Still going. And there continue to be people like me who believe she is one of the best ideas ever. In [...]