The SHINE Blog

Odds and Ends

It’s been one of those weeks where I didn’t think I would be that busy and so I planned to do a lot of creative things like redesigning the church’s webpage, but God had other plans and work kept piling up, so here are a few articles and thoughts as we go into the weekend…

• Adam and Eve had the perfect marriage. Here’s why.
• This week’s Barna link deals with the use of technology in church.
• Here’s a sweet story about Charles Spurgeon and his wife.
• Finally, two articles that hit a little too close to home (or church, I guess). A review of the book Simple Church and some similar ideas about Busyness as usual in the church.

It’s going to be a fun weekend - the Glenwood Gladiators play softball tonight at Old Peck Field at 9:30pm (which is past my bedtime - someone wake me when it’s my turn to hit). In addition to that, our SHINE contemporary worship service turns one year old this Sunday night! I’ll try to post on this later.

May 2nd, 2008 Posted by Brian Beasley | Glenwood Presbyterian Church, church articles | no comments

This Week’s Articles

Since my wife complained that I had too many articles in my last collection post, I figured I would post them more frequently. These are articles that I read that stick out to me, so I favorite them and post them when I get around to it…

• Potential Bad News For Our Band, Christian Endeavor:
  

  A Michigan church filed a federal lawsuit after police officers, led by a local prosecutor, entered the sanctuary at least twice without a warrant alleging the church’s music was too loud and, in one instance, threatened to arrest church musicians for disorderly conduct.

• Sometimes The Simplest Outreach Ideas Are The Best
  

  Every Sunday morning, Bradley J. Hales stands in front of Reformation Lutheran Church , Culpeper, Va., and waves to passing cars on Main Street—outreach with interesting results.

• American Idol Shouts To The Lord, But Changes Lyrics: This one wins for most unexpected evangelism event of the year…
• The Barna Group Looks At Tithing Ignore the paragraph that starts, “Strangely, tithing is a Jewish practice, not a Christian principle espoused in the New Testament.” Otherwise, some pretty interesting statistics.
• Sometimes The Simplest Outreach Ideas Are The Best - Part Two: I plan to use this one at Glenwood sometime this year. Thanks for sharing, Chuck!

April 16th, 2008 Posted by Brian Beasley | church articles | one comment

Articles, Articles, Articles

Ok - so I read a lot. I’m going to try to post on a regular schedule (hopefully once a week) some of the articles I have read lately. These will be articles having to do with church and church ministries or church philosophy. This post will be rather long, because I’ve been saving these articles until I could get around to posting them. If you read one of these and want to discuss, leave a comment.

Our first category for today is Church Marketing

• 15 Ways To Improve Your Church Marketing
• 10 Ways To Stop Me From Discovering Your Church: Does your church erect invisible barriers toward people getting connected with your church? Is it easier to find the Lost Ark rather than your church on a Sunday morning?
• Push and Pull People to Sunday School/Small Groups: Do you or do you not believe that moving people into Sunday School/small groups is an essential part of your church’s ministry philosophy? If you believe it is optional, then it will show. It will impact everything you do as a church.

Next we have some College Ministry articles… (thanks to Kevin for the first one)

• Is God Silenced On College Campuses?
• Exploring College Ministry: A great site I just found where the blogger is going on a year long road trip to see what kinds of college minstries are out there.

Here’s some thoughts on churches and church life…

• Corinth: Why Paul’s worst church may be our best model. “I think it’s time somebody came to the defense of the church in Corinth. Okay, so they’re all dead now. But they live on in two of Paul’s letters for all the world to see. I think Corinth, arguably Paul’s worst church, may be our best model for church today. Better than Purpose-driven, Willow Creek, or any of the other models out there. Here’s why:”
• Just Be The Church
• Budgets, boards and sausages: “People who enjoy sausages and respect the law should never watch either being made.”
  - Otto von Bismark (apocryphal)
  “Let’s add to that church budgets and board elections.”
• We May Be Small, But We’re Powerful
• Let’s Stop Being Idiots For Christ!
• Has The ‘Notion of Sin’ Been Lost?: Is sin dead? No, not by a long shot. Yet as Easter approaches, some pastors and theologians worry: How can Christians celebrate Jesus’ atonement for their sins and the promise of eternal life in his resurrection if they don’t recognize themselves as sinners?

Here’s two articles about outside “threats”

• Apologists Ask Churches To Step Up Response To Militant Atheism
• Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons fastest-growing ‘churches’ in US: The two fastest-growing church bodies in the United States and Canada, according to a newly published report, are ones whose beliefs are known to conflict with traditional Christian teaching.

Finally…I love statistics and studies. Here are three recent articles from the Barna group…

• Barna Finds Four Mega-Themes in Recent Research: A special analysis of thousands of interviews the company conducted during 2007 identifies several patterns that are significantly affecting the development of American culture. Those transformations were described as Americans’ unconditional self-love; nouveau Christianity; the five Ps of parenting; and designer faith with rootless values.
• Americans Embrace Various Alternatives to a Conventional Church Experience as Being Fully Biblical
• New Statistics on Church Attendance and Avoidance

Sorry so many on this post - I told you I had been saving them up!

April 1st, 2008 Posted by Brian Beasley | church articles | 2 comments