Posts Tagged 'church'
As a result of last Sunday’s teaching time, I have had a few people ask me about the section of Ephesians that I re-wrote by exchanging/inserting the term “future spouse”. It was a pretty effective way of making the Biblical text immediately applicable to a pre-marriage (and marriage) relationship. So, here it is again:
Be completely humble and gentle with your future spouse; be patient, bearing with him/her in love.
Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to and about your future spouse.
In your anger do not sin against your future spouse: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry with your future spouse, and do not give the devil a foothold.
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth toward your future spouse, but only what is helpful for building him/her up according to his/her needs.
Have you ever wanted to tell the church what you really thought? But who do you talk to? Who is listening? Well … here is your opportunity! The church that I am a part of is working through a refocusing process (I like to think of it as keeping the edge of our knife sharp – a dull knife is pretty useless), and has come up with four simple questions to help get a sense of what people in a community really think about the churches in their community.
So … regardless of where you are in the world right now, would you like to tell the church what you think? If so, click on this short, four-question survey, and express yourself! Spread the word, and have others give their opinions too. 
Thanks for your help!
The third American Religious Identification Survey has just been released, and it shows some interesting trends. In terms of percentage, overall self-identification as “Christian” has stayed about the same as it was in 2001 - 76%, but there have been a couple of areas of significant change:
- Non-denominational Christians have tripled in size (as a percentage) to just over eight million.
- Evangelical Christians have doubled in size (as a percentage) to over two million.
- Mainline Christians appear to have dropped the most, down to twenty-nine million.
 US Population by Religious Tradition Using the religious tradition categories above, how do you identify yourself?
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I’ve been doing some reading about “mission” this week, as I prepare for a teaching time about one of the core elements of a Christian’s “call” to follow God. What is our purpose, our mission, our calling, etc? At a high level, it seems threefold – all followers of God are called to holiness, to community, and to mission (which, not surprisingly, is also how our series is unfolding!). But what is “mission”?
This is where my reading comes in. Over at Christianity Today, there is a brief article called “The Greatest Social Need” that explores various social needs and concerns, but does so by asking the question of what the root problem is. The author concludes, and I would agree, that the greatest social problem is
For those of you who are taking the second four-week Foundations course at Westwood, a pdf of yesterday’s PowerPoint presentation is available here (just in case you weren’t able to write the notes down fast enough!).
I have just started to read Ravi Zacharias’ book called Beyond Opinion. In the introduction, he makes an observation about why the church in the West has been so intellectually weak. This is what he writes (page xiv):
To those in the West, the bigger the number of respondents, the more replicated the technique. The bigger the statistics, the greater the success. Westerners are enamored by size, largesse, number of hands raised, and so on. When the sun sets on these reports, we seem rather dismayed when statistics show the quality of life of the believer is no different from that of the unbeliever.
What do you think about that? Do you agree or disagree?
I think part of the answer has to do with
For those of you who are taking the first four-week Foundations course at Westwood, here are some resources you can refer to if you want to study the topics some more:
Have fun!
Here is a tough question – Does church, the way that we do it today, actually work? Put another way, does a person’s involvement in a local church naturally result in their spiritual growth and maturity so that they are increasingly devoted to God (Mark 12:28-34) and are making other disciples (Matthew 28:18-20)?
Many churches spend a lot of time, energy and resources as they try to encourage and challenge everyone in their Christian journey of growth and service. But are churches successful? Where/how are they successful? What is not working?
You can help by answering the very short survey below. Looking at the various activities that a church does, which ministry areas have spurred you on to be more devoted to God and to influence others to be more devoted to God? Notice what I am not asking – I am not asking which ministries are your favourite, which ones you enjoy, which ones the church is “good” at, etc. I am asking you to identify the specific ministries that have directly encouraged, challenged and/or equipped you to grow in Christian maturity (ie, your actions, attitudes, etc have been changed). So … with that as the context …
Loading ... Now of course, asking a question like this is just one small part of the larger question. But it is a very important part, so thank you for participating!
Also, why don’t you take a minute and post some comments below about your experience with a local church. How has your spiritual journey has been affected by the church? What has been positive? What has been negative? Why?
FYI … there is a great article (and series of responses) that the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has just published – click here to read it.
If the overall umbrella of the Christian life is that full engagement comes only with full surrender, and full engagement in life requires transformation of my ‘mind’, how are you doing? What struggles and successes have you had?
Mel mentioned that we renew our minds through patience, diligence and discernment. What has been your experience in each area?
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