By Jesse Medina Leaving the church is nothing new; Christians have been doing it since its inception. In the early days, it was usually due to heresy, an out-casting of sorts. Or sometimes, perhaps, it was the result of dissension: one person or group of people felt that their leaders or fellow Christians were off-base … Continue reading Stop Leaving the Church
By Jonathan Foster “We have vastly underestimated how deeply ingrained are the organizational and cultural rigidities that hamper our ability to execute.” -Elmer Johnson as quoted by David Brooks in NY Times Sounds like church. I’ve been receiving quite a few negative comments about church leadership, staff, or internal dynamics lately. These things, I believe, … Continue reading Planting and Cultivating Ethos in a Church
By Summer Lee Carlson I have to be honest. I like to give quite a few reasons for not having attended a physical church building in a long, long time. Usually I like to tell myself it’s because churches are too much like politicians whose ads are “endorsed by the one true King.” Or that … Continue reading Confessions of a Church Hater
By Jesse Medina On Mother’s Day, my wife and I were listening to the testimonies of various types of mothers in our church. They were beautiful stories of heartache and redemption. One woman shared about how she had an abortion as a teenager. One woman shared about her inability to conceive and finally hearing from … Continue reading Being Called by God: Redefining Normal
By Karen Swank This week I am renewing a promise I had made to myself, and then broken: I am done with church services focused on celebrating roles instead of worshiping God. Mother’s Day is, for some, one of the most brutal church services of the year. Oh, it’s sweet for some, and I don’t … Continue reading Holidays in Church: What Are We Doing Here?
By Serena Woods I spend a lot of time thinking about the countless numbers of people who want to know more about God and desire a relationship with Jesus, but won’t go to church because of the people in it. The life of a believer is a process by which an individual of flesh and … Continue reading Churches and the Freedom to Discover
By Jonathan Foster In the Colorado Rockies a couple of years ago while hiking with my then seven year-old son, we found ourselves in the middle of a stream trying to navigate our way back to our family. At one point our trail divided with one way being noticeably more difficult to hike than the … Continue reading The Failure of Church Marketing
By Summer Lee Carlson As a consequence of spending childhood in church, my memories are filled with felt boards, puppet shows and substitute “Halloween” parties in which one dressed as a Bible character or animal from Noah’s ark. The recurring theme of those felt boards and Sunday school lessons were usually centered on the men … Continue reading The Church: A Study on Ordinary People
By Jonathan Foster The Point of a Restaurant The point of a restaurant is to serve food… good, authentic food. Why do you open a restaurant if not to make an impression on someone’s palette? At the heart of the food business should be a love for cooking. Yet, many restaurants will expend resources creating … Continue reading What About the Food: Restaurants and Churches
By Jonathan Griffiths I’m pretty much a city boy. Raised in and around Birmingham, England, I moved to Idaho in 2004 because I met a girl who looked past my faults, agreed to marry me and this is where she’s from. Splitting my week between an IT job in a medical group and assistant pastor … Continue reading God in the Garden: A Lesson in Pastoring