Faith.Tech.Culture
I really resonated with a blog post by Scot McKnight “Incarnation is not a Ministry Strategy” as he talks about how recent efforts to brand a ministry as “incarnational” water down the term. Read it here. McKnight is reflecting on a book by Andrew Root about the topic and he says this: In the “incarnational [...]
Generational Clash in the ChurchFrom my day with Leonard Sweet that I blogged about last week, one of his base concepts is that the language of the church is changing. He calls the shift the most important since Gutenberg created the printing press and that indeed the times we are in require a shift in [...]
Hacking Missions A pastoral colleague sent me an interview with Robert Lupton whose recent book Toxic Charity has some controversial elements in it, among them criticizing the one-way relationship charities often have: The people with food give food to those without, etc. Here’s a quote from the interview: Q: You say churches and charities can [...]
Teleological Ethics [mission.hack]My pastor in high school was Rev. David Stephenson, who is now a Reverse Missionary to Bolivia. On one of his many trips to the region, he sat next to someone who had the following conversation: I sat next to a guy on the airplane on the way down here yesterday, and he [...]
My senior minister noted this past Sunday that Jesus is often sending people to do stuff. Sending disciples to get a donkey for the entrance to Jerusalem. Sending disciples to prepare the upper room Sending the Lawyer out to “do likewise.” Telling people to “Go” and do something. Often, Jesus was standing still while his disciples did the [...]
One of my seminary colleagues posted his new sign outside the Unitarian Church that he pastors in the UK. While the language is familiar to us Methodists, the punctuation is not. What do you see that is different? My friend’s church: The UMC’s slogan (click to enlarge): That’s right, the colon, which grammatically means that [...]
I was traveling with a wise elder minister. We drove through a town and saw two different churches side by side. The United Methodist church ran a clothing store where clothing was sold for .25 cents, jeans for $1, shoes for $2, etc. The other church advertised free clothes, jeans, and shoes. Neither was open [...]
Today, Iowa became the fourth third state (sorry CA) to have marriage equality. Regardless of your opinions on the issue, there’s a hacking moment in the decision that is important for Churches to hear when it comes to evaluating ministry standards and effectiveness. The Supreme Court based their decision on equal protection under the law: [...]
Image via Wikipedia “To Make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.” That’s the mission statement of the United Methodist Church. To me, then, this is a nice framework for the questions that need to be addressed in any ministry context. To Make Disciples Practicum: What forms of education and training are [...]
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