Here is an interesting fact about western European young adult and youth culture: Even after spending most of their lives attending the same church, they would rather join a soccer club than become a member of the church. Why do they have no problem putting on the jersey of a certain soccer team, but don’t [...]
It’s at least a decade or two old, and appears to be gaining momentum. It even has its own Facebook page, acronym, and ardent advocates. I’m talking about the “Spiritual But Not Religious” (SBNR) movement. Whether it’s a movement may be up for debate. The fact is, since the 1990s (and perhaps even earlier) a [...]
Parenting is not easy. Helping children and teens know and follow the will of God is both very challenging and very important. Nurturing young children in God, guiding carefully their education, leading them into knowledge of the Bible, involving them in worship and the fellowship of believers often seems more manageable than influencing them later [...]
For weeks now I’ve been challenging our people, at the end of the worship service, to bless three people . . . and make sure at least one of them doesn’t deserve it. This is in keeping with the covenant God made with Abraham: “You will be a blessing . . . and all the [...]
Mark Buchanan writes:
“I am preoccupied with a question how do I get more of God in my life? What combination of discipline and serendipity, striving and resting, what mix of painstaking study, freewheeling worship, wild faring play is needed if I’m to decrease and Christ is to increase? Where must I die to myself, and [...]
Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence, writes:
“The whole question of rules is, of course, a subset of the authority question. That is, the very presence of rules assumes some authority effecting them and some consequence for violating them . . . rules also define the boundaries that determine who is in and who is [...]
At the beginning of a new year the most common topic to talk about is the renewed goals we set for ourselves. We talk of goals that we know we probably won’t be able to meet, but we set them anyway. At the end of the year we look back with contentment, hopefully, but probably [...]
In all the excitement surrounding the call to be a “missional church” I find that there are still a few details that are in the process of being worked out. One of them has to do with developing some sort of understanding of what “commitment” looks like in the Body of Christ.
Now at one level [...]
Have you ever stared at yourself in the mirror for any length of time? Most of us check the mirror to see if we’re dressed properly—if our appearance is in keeping with our reputation, and so on. Such visits to the mirror are fairly objective. Our hair is fixed, our teeth are brushed, and we’re [...]
Recently I was at a youth camp and in one of the workshops I talked about the history and beliefs of the Church of the Nazarene. I was talking about how the church evolved out of several holiness movements within the U.S. and how these movements served many drug and alcohol addicts. I mentioned the [...]