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Posted by Anthony on April 24, 2010
This article discussing emerging church staff positions crossed my desk and caught my attention. According to the article, prevailing trends in society and in the Church (Institutional) suggest that we can see these positions being developed or created:
The Network Administrator
The Multicultural Children’s Director
The Chief of Staff
The Operations Pastor
The Creative Arts Director
The Boomer Director
The Spiritual Growth Pastor
I think this list, though not portrayed as comprehensive, is probably pretty accurate. Given my background, I noticed that one position is not mentioned: Apologetics Director. I think that is pretty accurate, too.
I find this to be pretty interesting and indicative of the state of the Church, Inc. today. Not to take away anything from the positions mentioned above or positions that may already exist, but we live in a society where Christianity is being deliberately attacked at a number of levels. At the same time, the culture itself represents challenges to Christianity less intentionally, in the form of hundreds and even thousands of new world views for Christians to encounter and have to deal with.
The average Christian receives an education from the Church that presumes that said Christian will never encounter someone with a different worldview or even one that is positively hostile. We educate our youth as though when they go to college their professors will be sympathetic to Christianity.
Now, we all know that hostility to Christianity is rampant. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 24, 2009
Today I posted a blog entry at a companion site proposing specific ways in which churches can exhibit love. These ideas involve setting up the congregation’s property in a way that is designed to do just that.
The two ideas I mentioned are… using ‘spare’ land to grow food to give to the needy and other purposes and build low income housing right on the congregation’s premises. I discuss and to an extent defend these ideas there, and don’t worry, I’ve got more ideas coming down the pike. You may comment on those ideas here or there.
What I did dwell on there but would like to spend just a moment speaking to here is this premise: “Congregational facilities should reflect the mission of the church. Where you put your money says something about what you value. You can tell a lot about a church and the Church by looking at its buildings and where it puts its money.”
Now, I don’t think this is a controversial premise. Moreover, I don’t think it applies only to the Church. I think this is just a general truism about money and people. But I ask: if true, what message is being communicated about what the Church values in view of the property usage by many, if not most, churches in America? Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on July 13, 2008
I received a forwarded email that originally was sent by some media guy who lost his faith reporting on religion. In that email the following excerpt was provided, abbreviated already, and I abbreviated it more:
… Having been raised to believe in a just God, my faith was shaken when my husband and I lost our ten-year-old child to Cystic Fibrosis, a congenital disease for which there is no cure.
We felt betrayed that a loving God could bring such pain to parents who lived by the Golden Rule and followed the Ten Commandments. As we coped with our grief, we couldn’t help but wonder why our love for our child wasn’t enough to keep her alive and why our faith wasn’t bringing us any comfort.
After losing another child to the same illness, we came to the conclusion that we were naïve to believe in the Sunday School version of a deity that sits in a place called heaven and doles out rewards for good behavior and punishment for bad. We have only to look at world events and know this isn’t true.
So, who to pray to? An impersonal deity who lets bad things happen to good people? We still haven’t figured that out. But it is difficult to abandon a life-long belief.
First of all, I am sympathetic to the woman who wrote this. I don’t think I blame her for her reactions. She merely compared the version of Christianity she received with the world as she experienced it. What she describes as the ‘Sunday School version’ of God is in fact what many people receive growing up, and what they receive even as adults. This is anecdotal evidence for a state of affairs I’ve been calling attention to repeatedly. For example, many of the nonChristians I discourse with also have ‘Sunday School versions’ of God floating around in their heads. Read the rest of the entry… »
