Do Churches Contribute to Their Communities – a report from the Barna Group

This report from The Barna Group on how Americans perceive the impact of churches in their communities is interesting. Although public skepticism of religion has become increasingly commonplace, a new Barna Group study shows that most Americans remain relatively upbeat about the role that local churches play in their communities. The nationwide study shows that [...]

I Didn’t Learn It From the White Males

Some of you have been following the synchroblog initiated by Julie Clawson on What is the Emerging Church. The responses to this have been diverse and fascinating.  I particularly enjoyed this post by Mike Clawson – maybe because like me Mike has learned many of his lessons from theologians outside the Western context. This effort [...]

Who Was The Woman With the Perfume?

Today I am winding up my time at OMSC where I have been teaching a course on spiritual renewal.  Yesterday we were reflecting on the story in Mark 14 about the woman who poured the perfume on Jesus feet at the house of Simon the leper and I thought that I would share some of [...]

What Have We Done With Jesus?

Easter Sunday is over.  Jesus is risen but what have we done about it?  How have our lives changed because of the life giving presence of Christ?  How many of us are still sitting at the empty tomb with Mary weeping because we are worried about what has happened to the dead body rather than [...]

Deepening Recession Ready Or Not

MSA is getting ready to host another brainstorming session to help provide resources for churches that want to be God’s compassionate response to those who are suffering from the deeepening recession.  We are hoping to produce a video presentation as well as written resources from this session but to make this a sucessful we need [...]

What I Have Read This Week

With all the work involved in getting our Lenten guide completed you can imagine that you usual reading discipline has been rather curtailed.  Probably the book that has most held my attention this week is Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson an David Oliver Relin.  This is a must read for anyone interested in [...]

An Invitation to join me in Getting Ready For Lent and Easter

Lent is still over a month away. It officially begins on Ash Wednesday – this year on February 25th. However I know that many people and certainly a lot of churches start thinking about how they will celebrate Lent the moment the Christmas season is over. A couple of years ago, after the 10th person [...]

More Reading on Community

My intensive reading course on community related topics continues and I am learning a ton.  Not sure yet how I will put it all together but I think that it is the most important topic I have tackled for years.  Over the last 2 weeks I have read 2 books that I think are extremely [...]

A Primer on Today’s Missional Church

I recently came across this great resource on JR Woodward’s blog Dream Awakener.  It is the most comrehensive resource on the missional church that I have come across and I am amazed at the amount of work JR has put into compiling this.  From the number of comments I think that others appreciate it just [...]