A New Type of Men’s Ministry

If your church is typical of most Evangelical congregations your men’s ministry might look something like this. It’s either (a) an extension of the small group concept, with guys meeting through the week for Bible study, or (b) a Saturday morning thing that might meet weekly or monthly for Bible study or a special speaker or combined with a breakfast.

The assumption has always been that men are busier than women, and chances are that your church has a more diverse list of opportunities for women. I want to toss something else into the mix here. There are three points, but they are building cumulatively toward the third.

1. Get A Room

In most Evangelical church buildings there is a youth room (and possibly a staff position that goes with this room.) If you’re big enough there may be distinct rooms for middle school youth and high school youth. There are no doubt many, many rooms for children’s ministry, used both on weekends and midweek. And if your women’s ministry involves some type of craft component — I’m told quilting is popular among older ones — there may be rooms set aside for them as well.

But there’s not necessarily a space set aside for men. They may utilize other parts of the building, but with the exception of a CRC that had a room filled with woodworking tools — mostly so the men could teach the older boys — I’ve never seen a room in a church that was dedicated for men’s ministry.

2. Customize That Space

People like David Murrow and others have written extensively about the dominance of the feminine touch in church décor.  (If this is new to you, click his name and check out Why Men Hate Going to Church.) I’m not saying build a man cave, or fill a space with sports memorabilia, hang a deer head, or have a cigar room; but do something that makes the guys feel at home. A pool table. Some comfy chairs. Posting a “Women Not Allowed” sign.

But have a space that is the hub of your men’s ministry where guys can check in on weekends, sign up for service projects, borrow books for guys on marriage and parenting, post notes about cars for sale, and maybe even be the location of some your midweek activities.

3. Open It Up After Work

This is where we’ve been heading. Right now a lot of men — even among Christians — stop at a bar after work. That’s not always the healthiest of environments. Some men do feel the need however to have a buffer zone between work and home. They want to diffuse some of the stress of the workday — and possibly the commute — before they enter the family environment. They don’t want to have to dump their employment crises on their spouse, or not have the energy to get excited about what happened at the kids’ school(s). Maybe 15 or 20 minutes is all it would take. If they get off work early enough, perhaps 45 minutes would do the trick without being late for dinner.

I’m proposing a place that is open on a regular consistent basis, maybe from 3:00 to 6:00 — or whenever your church’s family ministries commence on that one night of the week — with a part time staff person or volunteer available to serve non-alcoholic refreshments and change the sports network on the satellite system. 

…This isn’t ministry in the Bible study or service project sense, but I believe it would meet some real needs in your neighborhood, and be a bridge to the wider community as people invited their friends.

Also, it’s been my firsthand observation that the bigger the church the less likely people ‘drop in’ during the week. This changes that, and opens up the church building at hours other than those weekend services and that one midweek evening.

 

 

The Blogging and Congregational Outreach Analogy: 3 Types of Churches

I met Glenn Schaeffer years ago when he was a pastor in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada; and for many years his very colorful blog, Go and Make has been linked here. These thoughts really resonated and I wanted to make sure you had a chance to think this over!

You Find It … Hyperlinked … Embedded … What is the Tendency of Your Congregation?

I have been blogging for a few years. As I compose articles I find there are times when, either for the press of time or simply out of sheer laziness, I simply mention a resource and hope the reader will take the initiative and find it online. (This is not my usual practice!) There are times I will hyperlink to a resource so with a simple click of the mouse the reader will be taken to the website.  Other times, I embed the material right into the blog so that the reader simply scrolls down … clicks and watches what has been embedded into the blog.

I can’t help but see a parallel with congregations and their attitude toward their mission to the lost people in their community. Some congregations have the attitude that, “We’ve let people of this community know we are here. We have built our building, erected a sign and we have a website.  Now, it’s up the people of this community to find us.”

Other congregations “hyperlink” to their community.  Vacation Bible Schools, community workshops, worship services in local senior centers, brochure distributions, radio ads, preschools, “block parties” and home Bible studies make it easier for people in their community to find them.

Other congregations “embed” themselves into the social fabric of their community.   Member’s volunteer in a variety of community organizations … foster friendships with their unchurched friends or coworkers … develop relationships with seniors in senior care homes … invite immigrants into their homes to introduce them to western cultural practices … develop working partnerships with local organizations in their community or the neighborhood around their church building.  The people of the community encounter members of “embedded” congregations almost everywhere.  “Embedded congregations” don’t wait for people to find them … they find the people and serve them … love them and tell them about Christ!

What is the tendency of your congregation?

 

 

Encyclopedia of Modern Churches is Difficult to Read

Yesterday at Christianity 201, instead of using an excerpt from a book, I drew the day’s thoughts from a table of contents. I wasn’t given a review edition of the book anyway and was using a borrowed copy, and second, I had not looked at the individual chapters at that point. The table of contents is impressive supported our theme verse for the day

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. I Cor 12:4-7

We had a pastor who repeatedly said “It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.” Every church has something special to offer. The parish system — where you simply attend the church located closest to where you live — has some things in its favor, but for centuries now, Protestants have chosen their place of worship based on a variety of factors, some doctrinal and some, if we’re honest, that are totally superficial.

I also had a missionary friend who said, “Every denomination is an overstatement.” What he meant was that if you have a particular distinctive, you are going to emphasize that above everything else, which means that sometimes other priorities will fade into the background. So our churches often feature a particular facet of ministry life, but may do so at the expense of something else. Hopefully nothing that should be absolutely central is diminished beyond recognition.

The book is, The Ten Most Influential Churches of the Past Century: How They Impact You Today by Elmer L. Towns, published by Destiny Image. I did not quote index verbatim here, I just wanted to give readers there an overview. And it turned out there were more than ten churches covered; there are more than ten chapters! I combined a few, and warned my readers that listing does not imply endorsement.

• The worldwide Pentecostal movement
• House church / Home church movement
• Churches at the forefront of racial integration
• Church structures using a network of cell groups under a central administration
• Churches built on Christian Education / Sunday School outreach
• Churches using non-traditional teaching methods
• Churches targeting seekers, skeptics; the non-churched
• Baby Boomer churches
• Worship/Praise driven churches
• Integrated media, or internet-based churches
• Churches promoting multi-generational appeal and programs
• Positive-thinking or prosperity teaching churches
• Churches built on personal evangelism
• Churches focused on foreign missions
• Multi-site churches with video teaching
• Churches modeled after the concept of using church plants to evangelize

Now remember, with a couple of exceptions above, this has nothing to do with doctrine or teaching. You could map this on to a variety of denominations and many of the models would fit.

What’s your reaction to this?

Mine was generally positive. God us using many people in many different ways to accomplish his Kingdom Purposes. Yes, some of these have emerged more driven by the culture than by anything the First Century Church knew and some of these styles may be unknown a generation from now. Some are more likely to lead people into a deeper walk with God, and some are more entry-level; their converts will eventually feel the need to settle in another congregation.

But instead of bemoaning the particular styles you personally don’t care for, I think we need to celebrate what God is doing around the world. There are a few styles listed there that I know will cause eye rolls, but I’ve been to some of these and have found a depth of devotion and Bible knowledge among some adherents beyond the stereotypes.

If the gospel is presented clearly and is unobstructed by distractions, people will come to Christ through all types of churches, and those already in the fold will find avenues for greater growth and discipleship.

But let’s talk about the book itself.

I found this deeply disappointing on a variety of levels. Because I attended The Peoples Church in Toronto during some very formative years, I was looking forward to reading its listing in the section that goes beyond the author’s top ten choice, but after reading the first paragraph and turning the page, I discovered there was only a cursory listing for the additional churches.

Large sections of the book are copied directly from Wikipedia. While attribution is made for these, they appear in isolation, so the author then is forced to backtrack to give some of the chronology all over again. I guess if you don’t have internet…

Inexplicably, there are a large number of blank or mostly blank pages. At one point I checked to see if I was actually reading an advance reader copy (ARC) where information was waiting to be dropped in later. I was not. This was the finished book. I can see this as a style thing with the first ten chapters, after that it was basically a waste of good trees.

The book is very U.S.-centered. While there is mention of Peoples and four churches overseas, I can’t imagine a list of this nature, purporting to represent the most influential churches of the past 100 years not including Holy Trinity Brompton, which brought the world The Alpha Course.

There’s no mention of several prevalent styles. Because there isn’t a single church to represent them, a number of things are skipped over. One is the alternative, counter-cultural type of church like House For All Sinners and Saints in Denver. Or arts-based churches like (I believe) Mosaic Church in Hollywood. Another I would call prayer-based (or better, prayer-bathed) churches like the Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City. A third would be the New Calvinist type of churches such as the Sovereign Grace churches with their deep teaching and modern hymns. And finally, if you want an anti-role model, if you’re talking churches of influence, you might even mention Westboro Baptist.

Because of the liberality of the mostly blank pages, churches like Peoples and the Crystal Cathedral could have and should have had their section extended. I should also mention that I have attended some of the churches covered here on more than a single occasion, and thought the chapters on Willow Creek and Calvary Chapel would present this history well to those unfamiliar.

Elmer Towns is no novice on this topic. Although the book is well footnoted, he also drew on his own memories of these churches including interviews he did with the major players during times of explosive growth. I just think the book suffered more in the planning, editing and layout stages; the transition from concept to finished product could have been refined to give interested readers more information and better flow.

Weekend Link List

Carlos Whittaker explaining technology to Pete Wilson:

In order to highlight that the links are now on PARSE on Saturdays, I’m running the latest list here. Remember that these are especially keyed for pastors and church leaders, but I try widen that focus a little with things of interest to all of us. Feedback from Thinking Out Loud readers is always welcomed.  The decision to move to Saturday was made by CT, but we’re now in direct competition with our friends at Saturday Ramblings at Internet Monk, where you’ll also find a great summary of the week in religious news; and an especially busy list this week, too (including a sermon excerpt that’s not safe to play if your kids are in the room).

• A New Church Metrics Paradigm – Instead of counting bodies in the pew, you could count the times members invited their friends, relatives and neighbors. “I want to suggest a measurement that I believe would bring many benefits. This key measurement stat is ‘how many people have you asked to church this past week?’ Why that question? …[I]t does measure how enthusiastic the congregation is to want to talk about their church and what is going on there.” The writer sees eight benefits resulting from stressing this type of measurement.
• Americans Need a Counter-Script – Brian Zhand: “As Americans we are given a script from birth — it is our shared and assumed formula for the pursuit of happiness. Without even being aware of it we are scripted in the belief that our superior technology, our self-help programs, our dominant military, and our capacity to obtain consumer goods should guarantee our happiness. Said just so it sounds silly, but when it is communicated in the liturgies of advertising and the propaganda of state it becomes believable…  But it’s a lie. It’s a false gospel, yet enormously popular. The only possible way to resist that dominant script is through the adoption of what Walter Brueggemann calls a counter-script. For the Christian that counter-script is the gospel of Jesus Christ — at the center of which stands a cross!”
• Sunday Night, February 22nd – Is your church calendar open that night? Author Phil Cooke has an idea which, even if you don’t pursue it, will definitely get you thinking: Host an Oscar Party. “Recently, as I’ve been speaking at conferences and events around the world I’ve been urging Christians to stop looking at Hollywood as the enemy, and start looking at Hollywood as a mission field. After all, what if Christians stopped just criticizing, and actually started praying for the most influential industry in the world?” This isn’t a packaged simulcast; you’re on your own as to what it might look like.
• Essay of the Month: Our Hunger for Transcendence – “These men go to church on Sunday with the question of why eating holes in their guts, and the church tries to answer that transcendent question with a supposedly transcendent answer, yet nothing of those men’s experience in church from week to week ever takes them anywhere into the genuine transcendent light of God. You can’t meet transcendent needs of people who are stuck thinking only of fish, if all you can talk about is the fish itself. And churches today are absolutely mired in talking about the fish. You can blame the leaders, but the fact is, most of them are generations removed from the last transcendent moves of God in this country.”
• After a Year Without God, Pastor No Longer Believes – You’ve probably already been tracking the story of Ryan Bell, the pastor now turned “agnostic atheist.” Branson Parler writes: “Bell illustrates that our beliefs and life practices are inseparable. We can’t act as if God doesn’t exist and assume that we’ll keep believing. In the context of his famous wager, Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal recognizes that believing is not merely a matter of reason and the will, but of our heart, habits and passions. We can’t just will ourselves to believe something; the process is more mysterious than that… Bell is Pascal in reverse. If I spend a year living like God doesn’t exist, it’s not surprising that after a year of living that way, I believe it.”
• Unconditional Election, Meet Modern Worship – There are some who will disagree with this song’s theological mindset, the manner in which it is adapted from another well-known chorus, or both. No matter, it’s an eye-opener. The author justifies some of this in history: “One of the things [Thomas] Cranmer did was to take the Church’s inherited worship practices and, in a sense, “hijack” them… He took people’s beloved traditional prayers, for instance, and “edited” them to emphasize God’s work and de-emphasize our work.” In a second article: “We’re attempting to capture the spirit of the Reformation for modern times.” Listen to the remake of “I Have Decided” and decide for yourself.
• An Addiction You May Share – “On November 7, 2012, I stopped watching the Fox News Channel (FNC). That might not seem like a big deal if you didn’t know that I probably averaged 7-10 hours a week for years. I was a news junkie. I LOVED watching the news, hearing different angles on the news, and listening to incredibly smart commentators share their opinion about the news. I watched other channels too, but I was probably 90% watching FNC…I just knew my steady diet of Fox News wasn’t good for my soul. So I walked away. I’ve noticed several things have changed in my heart and mind as a result…”
• One Christian’s Reasons for Marrying Someone Divorced – “[E]ven though God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), he doesn’t hate divorce in isolation, as though he just thought up something arbitrary to hate. He hates it for a reason, and that reason–stated in the verse–is because divorce is a form of violence against the person one has married… God is in the business of redeeming messed-up, broken, and sinful people, not avoiding them… He didn’t abandon Adam and Eve to their fate, and create a new pristine pure species who had never fallen to be his people. His plan for salvation didn’t involve a command from On High, but rather involved God himself becoming human, choosing to be one of us, mixing together with sinful humanity… the truth is that God has involved himself with sinful humanity throughout history, and I for one am deeply grateful.”

 

Wednesday Link List

Summertime and the linkin’ is easy…Our biggest collection ever with 40 bullets!

• The major story this week was that the Church of England voted to end centuries of discrimination and will now consecrate women as bishops.
• Beyond the Titus and Timothy texts, there are other qualities that make for a great elder.
• Story of the Week: She spent her whole life within a few yards of her parents, growing up aboard a YWAM ship. And then she left for college.
• Over the years, many articles have been written on how to be the Christian wife of an unbelieving husband; but I’ve never seen it done as a catechism.
• 

  Read the list here or at PARSE, the blog of Leadership Journal (click this image)

  As you leave to “do church” each week, your residential neighbors probably stay home. That’s the subject of both a music album and a series of documentary videos. Check out The Desert Blooms Project.
• Churches and pastors wanting to share compassion in the middle of the border crisis have been told they aren’t welcome. (More at this story, also.)
• Analogy Avenue: Do we want to attract spiritual seekers, or are we looking for people to join the family? Lessons from the discomfort zone. (Complete with belly dancing!)
• Pew Research has been busy documenting the destruction of church property and facilities by governments. Worst offenders: Russia, China and Tajikistan.
• A story in pictures: Faith Chapel Christian Center in Birmingham, AL opened the door to a multi-purpose center. The Bridge has everything you want in a community recreation facility, with programming to match.
• Essay of the Week: The two types of people you meet when it’s time for worship.
• What’s in a name? This essay examines the various manifestations of what we generally term Reformed or Calvinist theology.
• The December movie, Exodus: Gods and Kings (aka the Christian Bale Moses movie) has a short trailer posted online.
• You already knew this, but to repeat, crafting a sermon and drafting a book are quite different.
• Essay of the Week: For gospel-centered preachers, it’s not necessary to go on a Where’s Waldo? quest to force Jesus to turn up in every text.
• Is social justice truly mandated for the Christ follower, or does it take place organically?
• Baptist ethicists counter the idea that a sexual revolution is taking place among Christian youth…
• …In another Russell Moore-related link, what do you do when a man in your church has confessed his adultery to God, but never told his wife? (7-minute podcast.)
• Defining ‘pastor’ and knowing what a church should expect from the pulpit and what the pulpit should expect from the church.
• Not surprisingly, the Wild Goose Festival 2014 had its detractors.
• Wow! People are really sensitive when you take their religious symbols and use them to sell blankets.
• A former Jehovah’s Witness returns to the denom’s HQ for a tour of the Watchtower Building in New York.
• The question everyone in ministry is asking this week: Does your church look like a beauty salon?
• From the UK, a metric look at church metrics. (The trick is transitioning between sizes.)…
• …while in the States, a look at how small(er) church pastors live in the tension between ministry and management.
• Jonathan Merritt accurately notes some of the tension points in Christian publishing over responding to the gay issue.
• Get Religion looks at the death, by his own hand, of a Dallas pastor, and also at the manner in which it was reported locally.
• After they fill in a welcome card, how does your church follow up with visitors?
• This week the Church of England also voted to relax the requirements for clergy dress.
• Here’s a future book topic, Sandra Stanley on a parenting methodology she calls constant conversations. (Part one of a multi-part series.)
• If your family has trouble choosing among several mealtime prayers you use, now you can always roll the die.
• Short but profound: Many of our miscommunications lie in the ambiguity when words have two meanings…
• …and more on the undermining of the meaning of “friend.” (No, it’s not about Facebook.)
• So if we can extrapolate from this story, it’s not the 98% of clergy that are the problem, it’s the 2% that make headlines.
• Sometimes a disclaimer needed: In a Sunday sermon at North Point, a recreation facility was recommended. Players compete with micro-chipped golf balls, but checking the website, alcohol is a big part of the party packages.
• Binding Satan: Do not attempt this at home.
• Okay. I don’t have a specific link, but there sure was a lot of buzz online about this book.
• Sermon of the Week: This one has Babel, Pentecost, European travel and several funny moments.
• I have no comment: The Jesus Scarecrow.
• The Pope continues to meet with American televangelists, but everyone was talking about the photo-story where James Robison gets a papal high five…
• …Finally, you can now own the same red sock the Pope wears. (They ship from Paris. How do I know this?)

While not curating the internet, Paul Wilkinson blogs at Thinking Out Loud and C201.

U2Charist: Rock’ n Roll Communion

On Saturday we attended our first U2charist: The music of Bono, The Edge and the rest of U2 combined with an Anglican (Episcopalian in the U.S.) communion liturgy. Two very different forces. Do they complement each other, or stand in stark contrast as opposing elements? I’m still not sure. You can read more about it at this Wikipedia page.

I believe part of the concept is to open up the Eucharist to the broader community; perhaps to attract lapsed Anglicans or former C. of E. (Church of England) members. I didn’t see a lot of that, though. Most of the people we saw seemed to be stalwart adherents of the host church. Many were retired. It was actually demographically awkward. My wife reminded me that U2 is a boomer band, but I still clung to the opinion that if only out of curiosity, members of the church’s youth group should have shown up.

We also spoke with a lot of people afterward who said they would have attended had they heard about it, though we did our best to put the word out. The church hired a U2 tribute band, and I must say that for their part, they played their role flawlessly, this being the first U2charist they’ve performed at.

I don’t quite understand why Anglicans can’t worship without the Eucharist. Maybe that’s a bit harsh. What I mean is that it always comes back to the same default. They do have Vespers (Evensong) and something called Compline, but for the most part, the church is very Roman Catholic about re-staging the mass on a rather constant basis. And unless you’ve taken a non-Christian to a high church service lately, the enactment of communion, the drinking of Christ’s blood, which we find rather normal, appears cultic or even pagan to the uninitiated.  Could you offer a broader community a “church” experience without the Eucharist? From an Episcopal perspective, maybe not.

Could you do a “rock” Eucharist with the modern music of a leading Christian worship leader such as Paul Baloche, David Crowder, Brian Doerksen or Chris Tomlin? Again, probably not since Anglicans don’t recognize those names at all, much less the wider populace.  Still, the ‘worship concert’ format — an oxymoron to some, I realize — is the Evangelical outreach format de jour.

Again, I think the band did a great job and the host church had good intentions. Some of the songs seem well-suited to the occasion. It was the demographics of the audience that failed for me; more effort should have been made to tap into and invite various segments of the community, rather than simply make an announcement and figure that the broader community would come to them.

How to be Rich is not a Book About How to be Rich

On the one hand, in these televangelist-saturated, prosperity-gospel-promoting times, giving a book the title, How to Be Rich is probably the dumbest thing ever. On the other hand, for anyone familiar with the annual Be Rich campaign at North Point Community Church, the title is absolutely brilliant. In fact, once you get to know the program, and read the book, your church may want to be rich as well, though it is much easier to do as a new church start-up than it is to try to shift the paradigm of how your church presently does local ministry.

So first the title.  It’s taken from I Timothy:

^{NIV 6:17} Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸ Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

Next the book. I enjoyed the book. I read it from cover to cover, some sections more than once. But the Be Rich campaign is the real star here, and if the publisher wants me to create some buzz for the book, a better course might be to create some buzz for what North Point does.

The book merely consists of material that author Andy Stanley (yes, I was going to get to that) presents each year as a set up for the campaign itself. It’s a reminder that we’re already rich. In an interview with Jonathan Merritt of Religion News Service, Andy was asked if this was a prosperity book:

It’s actually the opposite of the prosperity gospel. The prosperity message is “Give and it will be given unto you.” This message is, “It has already been given unto us. Now it is our turn to give.” I don’t need to give one to get 10. I live in the United State of America, so I already have my 10.

That interview however didn’t touch on enough of the history of the campaign for my liking, so let me try to fill in some details. In a nutshell, the team at North Point decided that when it came to doing things like food banks, after-school programs, support for young mothers, addiction counseling, etc., the church was determined not to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they purposed to find the people in the Atlanta area who were already doing well at various charitable endeavors and provide them with a funding boost. It wasn’t about ‘let’s start our program,’ but ‘let’s connect with our broader community.’

The next step was to raise the money — we’re now talking millions — in a single weekend.

At this point, I know some of you are thinking, ‘What does this have to do with the presentation of the gospel?’ The balance between social justice ministry and proclamation is never easy, especially for Evangelicals. But in the second phase of Be Rich (the campaign, not the book) the people of North Point pledge to spend hours in service, many times at the very same organizations which have received funding. They don’t want people simply writing a check or swiping a debit card and feel that they’ve done their part. They want people to also get their hands dirty.

I’ve watched that video* about eight times now, and each time I well up with tears. This model may not import entirely directly to what your church is doing, but you can’t help but want to adapt some of the concepts.

You can’t help but want your church to be rich.

A copy of How To Be Rich: It’s Not What You Have, It’s What You Do With What You Have (Zondervan) was provided by the Canadian division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

*If the video isn’t loading go to http://vimeo.com/81844837

Are Churches Counting The Wrong People?

Church metrics.

Yeah, that’s a thing.

Vince Antonucci has a different take on it:

Churches count their “attendance” each week. (Some don’t count very accurately, willing to count people – band, choir, staff, children’s volunteers, etc. – multiple times, but that’s a point for another day.) They count the amount of people from their city who show up at their church each week.

But I’d like to propose counting something different: The amount of people in the city not showing up at any church.

Seriously, a church can say that “This year we grew from 1,000 to 2,000!” but what if, in the same year, the amount of people not going to church in that city grew from 370,000 to 391,000? That gives you a very different picture of what’s happening, doesn’t it?

If the number we counted was how many people in our city are not going to church it would force churches to no longer celebrate growing through stealing people from other churches, it might lead churches to support and celebrate the success of other churches, and it would lead churches to focus on truly reaching the lost instead of focusing on their attendance numbers.

Instead of magazines featuring the “Hundred Fastest Growing Churches” there would be articles on the cities where the most people are coming to Christ, and isn’t that what we want to promote and celebrate?

So, what about it?

Wednesday Link List

Click the image above to learn more about the comic book version of the book In His Steps, where the whole WWJD thing originated.

• A really heartfelt story from Shaun Groves describing the somewhat atypical process whereby their family of five became a family of six. 
• A follow-up report on the aftermath of the Waldo Canyon fire on Navigator’s Eagle Lake Camp and Glen Eyrie Conference Center.
• Tim Stevens introduces a cool church property rebranding that reflects a heart to reach the community: Granger Community Church is now Granger Commons.
  
• The Evangelical church gave thousands of kids their dreams of being a rock star and made up this new staff position called “Worship Leader”.  According to Carlos W., it’s time for some to lose that dream.
  
• Philip Yancey encounters Hanna, a woman both blind and autistic, on her first visit to the United States. 
• Here’s a very well-written look at confronting our fears in the wake of the event in Colorado and similar events elsewhere.
• And in the wake of the shooting, a most unusual good news story about a girl who was saved by a birth defect she never knew she had. 
• Really enjoyed the Pete Wilson podcast, particularly the question from an aspiring pastor who asked if he could come to Cross Point as an intern.
  
• Nearly 15 years ago, ‘print on demand’ technology was supposed to bring back many out of print books, including Christian titles. The technology works, but where are the books? 
• Ouch! Every year dozens of boys in South Africa die from botched circumcisions. I read the article but skipped the video.
  
• A Canadian version of the oft-repeated story wherein the owner of a Bread and Breakfast refuses to rent a room to a gay couple, and pays the price in court.
• Doing camp ministry in North America this summer? Here are six reasons why it would be quite different if you were in Slovakia.
  
• If you like your Christian music LOUD, then you need to visit all the new lyric videos posted last week by the band House of Heroes.
• Randy Morgan finds a great book excerpt from Garrison Keillor, speaking in the voice of Guy Noir, Private Eye; on the subject of modern teenagers.
  
• Zondervan continues its Counterparts series with Four Views on Christian Spirituality, comparing Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Liberal Protestantism.
• A large auditorium is a large auditorium, right? Not in Wisconsin. A Federal court has ruled that school graduations that took place in churches were unconstitutional. 
• Here’s one of my own pieces at Christianity 201, about getting the nerve to ‘pop the question’ to someone with whom you’ve shared your faith.
• And another one at C201 about what kind of people get picked to spread the good news.
  
• Wanna be a priest, a minister or a rabbi? (No this isn’t a bad joke.) Well, if you have a smart phone, you could always download Ordain Thyself. Tony Jones spotted a mention of it at CNN.

200 People Are Skipping Church on Palm Sunday

I’ve never been prouder of an initiative launched by the church we’ve attended — off and on — for 20 years since moving an hour east of Toronto.

Call it “reaching out,” or “community involvement,” or whatever you want.  Cobourg Alliance Church has decided to participate — in a huge way — in the annual walk for Multiple Sclerosis; a walk which just happens to fall on Palm Sunday, what most would consider the third most important Sunday of the year after Easter Sunday and Christmas Sunday.

The church will still hold worship services for those who wish to attend, but the nearly 200 people who have signed up so far is a significant percentage of the regular attendance at church in this town of only 18,500.

Participation also means fundraising, and the pastor, Andre Turcotte, is hoping that the church will be one of the top fundraisers in the area.  Those who can’t walk significant distances will be acting as volunteers. There are five individuals and/or families in the church dealing with MS.

I’m sure that organizers of events like this notice a dearth of participation from churchgoers when the events are held on a Sunday. “Skipping Church” is a big sacrifice for those who grew up believing the place to be on Sunday morning is singing the hymns and listening to a sermon.

Instead, this congregation will be busy “being church.”

Though we will be leading worship at another church that Sunday, we will be watching this with interest, and praying that it shows to the local community that Christ followers are willing to, literally, put feet to their beliefs; not just ‘talking the talk,’ but, literally, ‘walking the walk.’