Tag: growth

‘Virtual preaching’

The process may sound impersonal, but churches that use high-def video technology say congregants don’t have to lose touch with ministers. They hire other church pastors to serve their satellite locations by leading Sunday morning services and meeting with people afterward.

Those ministers simply exit the stage when it’s time for the sermon and video screens to descend over the altar.

via ‘Virtual preaching’ transforms Sunday sermons – CNN.com.

There are many interesting questions that come up when reading about satellite churches. For one, what does it say when there is only one considered qualified to preach? What does it say about our understanding of community? What is the role of the church pastors, if not to deliver the Word? How does this works if there is a Eucharist? And so on and on.

Search Institute

Search Institute® is an independent, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization committed to helping create healthy communities for every young person. Because we believe that “all kids are our kids,” we create books and other materials that welcome and respect people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, genders, religions, economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and abilities. Our Mission: To provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities.

Search Institute: 50 Years of Discovering What Kids Need to Succeed | Search Institute.

Of special interest at Search Institute are the well known “Developmental Assets.” The Developmental Assets are 40 “qualities essential to raising successful young people.”

Is ‘Mainline’ becoming Mainline again?

Total membership in the seven largest mainline Protestant denominations — United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian Church (USA), Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches — fell a total of 7.4% from 1995 to 2004, based on tallies reported to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches.

Meanwhile, the total membership count for Roman Catholics, the ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Convention, Pentecostal Assemblies of God and proselytizing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) reported to the Yearbook is up nearly 11.4% for the same period.

via Some Protestant churches feeling ‘mainline’ again – USATODAY.com.

An article about St. Mark Evangelical Lutheran Church in Yorktown, that is for sure a mainline denomination but is still growing. It does not use PowerPoint or a Praise band, but offers food twice a week for those gathered.

The Myth of Positive Thinking

I came across this via orvitinn.com. Watching this video led my to www.thersa.org which describe themselves as:

For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.  Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.

The Real Reason for Decline

The mainline denominations do seem to be weak in the sense of being unable to generate and maintain high levels of commitment among a substantial portion of their adherents. Although we are skeptical of Kelley’s argument about the relation between strictness and church growth, he is right that weak churches are in a precarious position as organizations because further weakening may diminish their members’ commitments to the point of noninvolvement.

via Mainline Churches: The Real Reason for Decline.

Benton Johnson, Dean R. Hoge, and Donald A Luidens look at the mainline decline, and come to the conclusion that people don’t show up because it does not matter.

Liberalism as the Root of Decline

In the article Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline (subscription needed), Joseph Bottum seems to come to the conclusion that well educated liberals in charge of the mainline denominations headquarters are to blame not only for the church’s decline but for rising division in God’s chosen country it self.

Many Americans are profoundly patriotic, no doubt, and many Americans are profoundly critical of their country. We are left, however, with a great problem in combining the two, and that problem was bequeathed to us by the death of Protestant America – by the collapse of the churches that were once both the accommodating help and criticizing prophet of the American experiment.

Mr. Bottum is right when he brings attention to the new unity in the religious spectrum.

The horizontal unity of Mere Religion cuts across denominations. Serious, believing Presbyterians, for example, now typically feel that they have more in common with serious, believing Catholics and evangelicals – with serious believing Jew, for that matter – than they do, vertically, with the unserious, unorthodox members of their own denomination.

However, I would not use words like serious and unserious believer, implying that those that don’t belong to the conservative, orthodox, “right-wingishy,” world that Mr. Bottum seems to lean towards are somehow not taking their faith seriously. It is actually possible to claim the oposite as a fact.

The Association of Religion Data Archives

The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) strives to democratize access to the best data on religion. Founded as the American Religion Data Archive in 1997 and going online in 1998, the initial archive was targeted at researchers interested in American religion. The targeted audience and the data collection have both greatly expanded since 1998, now including American and international collections and developing features for educators, journalists, religious congregations, and researchers. Data included in the ARDA are submitted by the foremost religion scholars and research centers in the world.

via The Association of Religion Data Archives.

A Helpful Counter Narrative

David Murrow offers a valuable and perhaps helpful narrative to counteract the niceness in the mainline churches, at least in the US, in his book Why Men Hate Going to Church. What he uses to encounter the “be nice” and “be irrelevant” theology of the mainline churches, is the boyish theology (isl. strákaguðfræðin), which I learned in Vatnaskogur Summer Camp in Iceland. Theology of action and fun, lay driven, running thru puddles, getting dirty and wet, competing for the price like Paul, solution based, focused on results rather than community “goody-goody” feeling. Its contains an “Onward Christian Soldiers” worship style, with stories of heroic adventures.

In his writing it is clear that Mr Murrow is surely not a theologian, his glorified thoughts about the early church is way off base, and John Gray’s pop-psychology, Mr. Murrow quotes, is not worth the paper its written on.

However, Mr Murrow is right that there is more to Christianity than kumbaya-ish be good to some, singing about our love to Jesus, and helping out in the nursery. If we are to live Christlike, we have to stop being polite and nice, become risk takers, step up and out, and be ready to get dirty and wet as we run for the price. Or as they say in Vatnaskogur: “Press on towards the goal.” (Phil 3:14)

Statistics on Religion in America Report

An extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life details statistics on religion in America and explores the shifts taking place in the U.S. religious landscape. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.

via Statistics on Religion in America Report — Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Beyond Strategic Control: Applying the BSC to a Religious Organization

Kaplan and Norton have provided a framework to link control to an organization’s vision-the balanced scorecard. This approach provides measures in four areas: (1) Customer, (2) Internal Business, (3) Innovation and Learning and (4) Financial. This article provides a starting point in adapting this method to a church by looking at four measurement perspectives: (1) Members/Attenders, (2) Internal Ministry Processes, (3) Ministering, and (4) Innovation and Learning. An example is then developed using a church’s mission and vision.

via Beyond Strategic Control: Applying the Balanced Scorecard to a Religious Organization – Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing.

Sizing Up a Congregation

Arlin Rothauge’s “Sizing Up a Congregation” (pdf) is a great overview of the dynamics found in different sized churches.

It addresses the Family Church (0-50), The Pastoral Church (50-150), The Program Church (150-350), and The Corporation Church (350-500+). From the perspective of the pastor, the issues are different in each of those. The smallest one calls the pastor to be innovative and finding things to do, but at the same time be available. The Family church is all about being reactive, there is not a lot of room for innovation, the pastor often seems to have favorites (those that have initiative to be in contact). When we move into the program church, the root of complaints towards the pastor is that he is not available for all groups, and does not participate in all programs. The issues in the largest church group are seldom about the pastor, more about lack of space for various tasks (lets build something together).

Rothauge does not address what we might call mega churches or multisite variations.

Prep, Inc

PREP (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program) is one of the most comprehensive and well respected divorce-prevention/marriage enhancing programs in the world. PREP is a skills and principles-building curriculum designed to help partners say what they need to say, get to the heart of problems, and increase their connection with each other.

On their website are various resources about marriage, cohabitation, and divorces. It has a bend towards traditional understanding of the family, but valuable nonetheless.

Prep, Inc – Articles. – Of special interest is Marriage in the 90s: A Nationwide Random Phone Survey (PDF).

Did Christianity Cause the Crash?

Your Best Life Now, which has fueled a TV show that Osteen claims is now seen in 200 million homes worldwide, opens with a story of a man on vacation in Hawaii. He was “a good man who had achieved a modest measure of success, but he was coasting along, thinking that he’d already reached his limits.” While sightseeing, he and his wife admired a gorgeous house on a hill. “I can’t even imagine living in a place like that,” he said. For this bit of self-deprecation and modesty, Osteen pities the man: “His own thoughts and attitudes,” he writes, “were condemning him to mediocrity,” or what is known in the gospel as the “defeated life.”

via Did Christianity Cause the Crash? – The Atlantic (December 2009).