The Third Time is the Charm It’s Memorial Day weekend. Holidays are a bad time to visit a church. Seldom is it a representative experience. The wise decision would be to attend our own church, but I know we usually have the B team on holiday weekends. We’ve already visited this church twice and know […]
Isaiah Tells the People that God Will Choose Them Again, but Did He Ever Stop? One phrase jumps out from today’s passage in Isaiah’s prophecy to God’s chosen people: once again he will pick Israel. God, through Isaiah, gives his people hope for a better tomorrow. At this particular time, however, God’s people are discouraged; […]
A Holiday Weekend, Light Attendance, and a Great Time I volunteer twice a month at our local food pantry. Staffed with people from area churches and service organizations, we serve those in need in our community. One Saturday, between clients, I have an opportunity to talk with a man who attends Church #2. I ask […]
Reform Sunday School as an Education Service to Your Community It may be strange to see Sunday school on this list of things we must change for our churches, but we should carefully reexamine it. Do you know the original mission of this Sunday program? It was to teach poor children how to read. And […]
Wrapping Up Our Year of Visiting Churches Our journey of visiting fifty-two churches is over, though the memories will last forever. With much to consider, this wrap-up pulls together key elements of our adventure. I hope this helps you and your church better interact with and respond to visitors, as well as find new ways […]
A Recap of Churches 27 through 44 The churches are starting to blur. Every week seems the same, offering only slight variations on a theme. I’m growing weary of our journey. I’ve realized this for a few weeks but didn’t want to admit it. Yes, I still notice kindnesses offered and innovations presented at the […]
Preparing to Visit Our Next 13 Churches Going forward in our journey of visiting 52 Churches, we may bypass more churches on our list to vary the scope of our adventure. So far, we’ve skipped one that wasn’t a Christian gathering and another because they were in limbo, pending a turnaround. The next thirteen churches […]
The Allure of Something Fresh After a year or so of attending The Nonconventional Church, we receive a series of captivating postcards about a new church that will soon launch in our community. I soon call them the Postcard Church. I’m intrigued and want to learn more. My wife doesn’t. Though they’re part of a […]
Discover Why God Should Inspire Our Awe The word awesome is overused today, so much so that it’s almost cliché. When most people say awesome, what they mean is outstanding or really good. Yet slang aside, the primary definition of awesome is to inspire awe. Given this, in the strictest sense, only God is awesome. […]
Waiting for the Service to Start I volunteer at a budget program where I teach classes and encourage people to manage their finances, unlearn bad money-handling habits, and dig out of debt. It’s a biblically based program, and it meets at a local church, which is also today’s destination. In the brief time I’ve been […]