During my 25 plus years of church consultations, I have interviewed a number of these active-to-inactive persons. Most of them shared freely and openly with me what took place in their lives, and how it impacted their ultimate decision to stop attending church.
Read moreAs congregational leaders, we must confront the fact that our churches are dying. While we may wish they were timeless and eternal, at the core our churches are living human organisms, and dying is what all living organisms eventually do. But first they are born, live, adapt, create new life, and pass on their DNA to the next generation.
Read moreEvangelicalism is in the midst of a Calvinist revival. Increasing numbers of preachers and professors teach the views of the 16th-century French reformer. Mark Driscoll, John Piper and Tim Keller - megachurch preachers and important evangelical authors - are all Calvinist. Attendance at Calvin-influenced worship conferences and churches is up, particularly among worshipers in their 20s and 30s.
Read moreWhile I believe we need to understand reality inside our ranks, I don't believe the situation is quite as dire as many are making it out to be. Actually, no serious researcher believes Christianity in America is dying. Not one.
Instead, I believe this current cultural shift is bringing clarity that will assist in defining who we are as Christians, and that is a good thing in some ways.
Read more[26] And the Lord said, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake."
[27] Abraham answered and said, "Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.
[28] Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?" And he said, "I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there."
Read moreMeena: Rescued from Death, Now an Evangelist
Meena Kumari was born into a traditional carpenter's family where she grew up worshipping many Hindu idols and practicing many rituals. She studied up to 9th grade, but after that her family felt that girls should not study any further and planned for her marriage. When she was 15 years old, she got a wound in her leg that she did not take seriously-she put some medicine on it but it never healed.
Read moreThe report calls on government to begin a process of investing serious funding in the church to make it fit for this purpose, and calls on the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would essentially be seen as the CEO of this organization, to get the church ready for this redefined mission of partnering with government.
Read more"Could we be at one of these moments in history where technology, if we leverage it correctly, could transform how we engage in the Bible?" Gruenewald, 37, recalls thinking that day. "Drawing from the story of the printing press, for centuries, that really changed our access to the Bible. It's probably something today we easily take for granted, but it came through invention."
Read moreLiverpool was a completely new challenge. The area of work was immense. With 1.1 million inhabitants, it had a greater population density than any other diocese in Britain except London, and had grown at a phenomenalrate during the midnineteenth century. Ryle surveyed his new mission field, far removed from a rural idyll:
Read moreGraham said that there are a lot of things that his health and strength no longer permit him to do, but that there are still many things he can do, "and one of them is pray." He writes that he is praying fervently for "a fresh spiritual awakening in America."
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