Hanging Out with Those Who Share Our Beliefs May Be Comfortable, But It Isn’t Good In the post “Can You Be a __ and Still Be a Christian?” we discussed our tendency to judge other Christians and evaluate their faith through the lens of our life and the spiritual decisions we make. But these choices […]
When we arrive at church portrays something about us. More importantly it reveals much about the importance we place on God and worshipping him. Aside from conditioned and cultural predispositions towards punctuality, we also have personal circumstances that can interfere with our best intentions. Having a baby, small children, or many children can all impede […]
Go into All the World and Make Disciples About two billion people in the world call themselves Christians, more than those who align themselves with any other religion. But how many will call themselves disciples of Jesus? The Bible never tells us to make Christians or even to be a Christian. But it talks a […]
Discover the Origin of Having a Local Place of Worship Another interesting word that occurs only in the New Testament is synagogues. Appearing sixty-six times, it’s in all four gospels, a lot in the book of Acts, and twice in Revelation. That’s it. Notably the word synagogue does not appear in the Old Testament. Where […]
May My Clothes Never Keep a Visitor from Encountering God My parents, especially my mom, taught me to dress up for church. That’s what people did when I was a kid, and I didn’t question it—even though I’m still looking for a biblical command to do so. Never mind that I’m sure my parents spent […]
Discover What the Bible and Our Experience Teach Us In my posts, I write a lot about the importance of community, specifically meaningful spiritual community. I’ve mentioned community over one hundred fifty times. Two related words—or potentially related words—are fellowship and discipleship. Aside from my posts about 52 Churches, I’ve written about fellowship ten times. […]
Churches Close for Tangible Problems, But Maybe Some Should Close for Spiritual Reasons In the book of Malachi, God laments about his people. Specifically he’s down on the priests because they show contempt for him. Their worship is so off-track that God wishes one of the priests would just shut the temple doors. This would […]
Going Church Shopping Turns Spirituality into a Commodity Last week we talked about how to find a perfect church. We gave a simple two-step process. (Check it out.) This is the opposite of what most people do when they look for a church. Most people go church shopping. Yes, I’ve done it too. When we […]
Try This Counter-Cultural Approach When It’s Time to Select a New Church There’s an astute saying, “If you find the perfect church, don’t join it—because then it will no longer be perfect.” The reality is that as long as a church has members, it will never be perfect. That’s because we’re imperfect, so the churches […]
The Best Christian Community Happens After the Service Is Over Last week I asked, Why do people show up for church late? My wife and I try to arrive ten minutes early, a practice we developed when we visited fifty-two churches in a year. This allows for time to interact with others, to enjoy a […]