Pastor Compensation For the most part, the church of today is an institution. Institutions require structure and leadership; self-perpetuation is essential—regardless of cost. For an institution to work, it needs paid staff. That’s why local pastors receive a salary: to keep the institution of church functioning and viable. To pay your minister follows the Old […]
Don’t Do Church Wrong I think we’re doing church wrong. At first I assumed it was just me, but today’s church is stuck in a rut, an Old Testament rut. We follow an Old Testament model for church. Moses’s Method: The Old Testament Model When God gave Moses the Law, he established some key expectations […]
Be Careful Who You Invite into Your Life Who influences you? Who are the people that guide your decisions and inform your perspectives? We must be careful who we let into this most critical mental space of our lives, for if we are unwise in who we let shape our sensibilities, we risk letting others […]
God Created Us to Thrive in Community In visiting congregations for my book 52 Churches, I realized the importance of community. Regardless of the music or the message we encountered during their service, the bigger factor in our experience was the human connection. Make a Human Connection at Church If I interacted with others before […]
Attending Church with Friends 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 #44. We revisited this church, which we attended some fifteen years ago. Though many of the people we knew then had scattered to other churches or just […]
Learn More about Luke Paul is the most prolific writer in the New Testament. Who is second? That would be Dr. Luke. Luke wrote an account of Jesus’s life (called “The Gospel According to Luke,” or simply “Luke”). He also chronicled the activities of the early church (called “The Acts of the Apostles” or just […]
Virtual Church I’m doing research about online church for my next book about Online Church. I’ve also started writing, too, and am excited with what I have so far. Update: I’ve written and published the book. It is called Visiting Online Church and is now available everywhere from all major bookstores and outlets.
The Value of Eating Together 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 #39. Many churches share a meal or food after their service, but this one put a new twist on it: we head off to a restaurant, […]
Reimagining Our Sunday Traditions from a New Testament Perspective Do you have a nagging feeling that something’s missing from your church experience? You’re not alone. And it’s time to discover a better way. Church-reform advocate and Bible scholar Peter DeHaan, PhD is a strong proponent of meaningful Christian community. In Jesus’s Broken Church, he uses […]
Today’s Church Isn’t Working. It’s Just That Most People Don’t Know It. Do you have a nagging feeling that something’s missing from your church experience? You’re not alone. It’s time to discover a better way. It’s typical that people who read the Bible do so through the lens of their experiences. Christians use the perspective […]