We are All Priests Through Jesus With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #36. We arrived at church only to learn they cancelled the service because their pastor had an emergency. Despite this, we hung around and talked […]
Update Your Church Practices With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #35. We thought we arrived early to this church, but it seemed the service had already started. Everyone was sitting down. People were singing. There were no […]
The Lifecycle of a Church With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #34. From a human standpoint, the future of this congregation is bleak. When we visited, eleven people showed up. In addition to my wife and me, […]
Avoid Creative Marketing for Your Church With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #30. We also attended Sunday school at this church, the only time we did so on our sojourn. The problem was that we didn’t intend […]
A Laity Led Church Service With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #29. With their minister gone, church members lead us in the service, the entire service. They don’t need paid staff or a guest speaker to conduct […]
Embracing Tradition and Worship Ritual With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #28. Steeped in ritual resulting from centuries of carefully protected tradition, the spiritual mystery of this tiny liturgical church presented me with an enigma I’m yet […]
Don’t Hold a Church Business Meeting After the Service With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #23. It’s challenging to get members to attend a church business meeting during the week, as it requires an extra trip to […]
Sounding the Shofar at Church With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #21. Of all the 52 churches we visited, this one deviated the most from current church practices. It was a unique church service and a memorable […]
Embracing a Service in Mandarin With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #20. Although I’m uncomfortable in situations where language differences make conversation hard, if not impossible, something about this church draws me. Despite not knowing Mandarin, I […]
Adjusting to How We Gather on Sunday Mornings It’s been four months since I’ve been to church service on Sunday morning. It isn’t that I’ve lost my faith, have backslidden, or am pursuing a rebellious protest. It’s because of coronavirus in 2020. With government mandates to avoid large gatherings, most churches responded by moving their […]