The first of fifty-two churches is a small Baptist-affiliated assembly. With forty or so normally in attendance, this Sunday has only seventeen. The service is not unlike churches my wife attended in her youth, so she feels comfortable and is familiar with their format even though it now feels quite dated. The people are friendly […]
Our experience of visiting fifty-two churches in a year is over. I’ve shared the journey, as well as my recap and reflections on our pilgrimage. It was a great experience. What’s next? Quite a bit, actually. 52 Churches is now a book, with a scheduled publication December 4, 2018. I only posted a fraction of […]
When It Comes Time to Change Churches, Attitude Is Everything Last week we talked about when not to change churches, instead of looking to find a new church. Too often people treat their church as a commodity and behave as a consumer, switching their loyalty over trivial things. Most of the time, however, the best […]
When We Go Church Shopping We Behave as Consumers and Don’t Honor God In today’s practice of retail religion, we pursue faith has a consumer and miss the purpose of church. We’re quick to change churches over the smallest of issues. Yet, usually the best action to take is no action: Don’t change churches. Often […]
Can You Have a Church Service Without Hearing a Preacher Speak? My wife and I recently visited a church. Though we didn’t know it before we walked in, their service would be different that week. There was no sermon. The church used the normal sermon time to talk about the missionaries their church supported. They […]
Embrace Those Who Are Checking Out Your Church For the past several months, a roadside sign at a church proclaims “Visitors Welcome.” This amuses me. Isn’t that assumed? Doesn’t every church want to grow? I’ve never been to a church that had a “no visitors” policy. Why does this church need to advertise their desire […]
My wife and I recently visited a church near our home. Their website said they were a charismatic church. This would make them a refreshing anomaly in an area filled with mainline churches and a sprinkling of evangelical ones. I anticipated what we would find. However, when we arrived, I was dismayed to read their […]
Church Marketing Easter this year was a few weeks ago, on April 5. A week and a half later, on April 15, I received a postcard inviting me to attend a church’s Easter service. Aside from arriving too late to do any good, the church wasn’t even nearby; it was an hour’s drive away. What […]
Adjusting to an Ever Varying Sunday Schedule When my wife and I started our journey of visiting fifty-two churches in a year, one variable seemed trivial at first but had wide ramifications. That item was service times. With church starting times as early as 8 a.m. and as late as 11:30 a.m., our Sundays looked […]
Say a Pre-Church Prayer One of the practices my wife and I followed when we visited 52 churches was to pray before we headed out the door. This seems simple enough and something we should have always done, but praying prior to church was a practice we seldom did, more likely skipping it than remembering. […]