Today in the United States, a three day holiday weekend (for Labor Day on Monday) effectively marks the end of summer. As I anticipate going to church, I know I’ll see fewer people there. I’m bothered over the low attendance. And I’m bothered that it bothers me. Growing up, only two things kept me from […]
By Bob Hostetler (reviewed by Peter DeHaan)A book bearing the instruction to “quit going to church” might strike some church-going folk as a text to avoid, one surely full of disrespectful thoughts or even heresy. This is not so with Bob Hostetler’s book. Bob pens his work, not as one who has dismissed church attendance […]
In my post “What I Learned From The Great Divorce,” I shared three levels of spiritual understanding for a book: reading it, seeing it preformed, and discussing it afterward. These have parallels to our spiritual journey. 1. Read I was intrigued when I read C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. However, my primary reaction was […]
Go To Church, Change the World: Christian Community as Calling By Gerald J. Mast (reviewed by Peter DeHaan)Despite a trend to the contrary, the premise of Gerald Mast’s book Go To Church, Change the World is that church involvement is not a tradition to throw aside, but a practice to embrace. With a calling to […]
I think it was Reggie McNeal who first said, “People…are not leaving the church because they have lost their faith. They are leaving to preserve their faith.” That statement may be shocking—even heretical—to some, but I suspect that for many it is enlightening, effectively explaining declining church attendance, albeit in a disconcerting and confronting manner. […]