This story of the life-saving station that became a club has become a familiar parable of the modern church. I first heard it a few years ago, and was struck by how well it seemed to describe the church as I experienced it. As it turns out, this parable dates from 1953! Continue reading →
Category Archives: Leadership
Can We Stop Talking About “Us”?
Something that has been a bugbear for me for a while now is the use of “us” and “our” language by churches. You know the kind of thing I mean: “We welcome you to join us for worship at 10” … Continue reading →
What’s Missing?
I remember the last Sunday before the suspension of in-person worship back in March. I remember remaining on my knees at the altar rail after receiving the host—the common cup had been suspended the week before—and getting choked up. Or … Continue reading →
Three Sins of the Mainline: Pastoral Care for Insiders
This post will focus on the third and last of our “sins” of the mainline: pastoral care as a membership privilege. Previous posts in this series focussed on the sins of “relevant” preaching and “accessible” liturgy.
Continue reading →Three Sins of the Mainline: “Accessible” Liturgy
In this post we take a look at the second of our “sins” of the mainline church, the sin of “accessible” liturgy. A previous post examined the sin of “relevant” preaching, and a subsequent post will consider pastoral care as … Continue reading →
Three Sins of the Mainline: Introduction
In this next series I’m going to take on what I think of as three of the major “sins” of the contemporary mainline church: relevant preaching, accessible liturgy, and pastoral care as a privilege of membership. You may be surprised … Continue reading →
Why Do We Gather? Covid and Sunday Attendance, Part 3
As our long season of Coronatide rolls on without any sign of abating—and in fact is steadily worsening in most areas—perhaps it is time to reconsider our focus on Sunday worship gatherings. As I noted in the previous post Sunday … Continue reading →
Covid and Sunday Attendance, Part 2
In my previous post I described the current challenge faced by congregational leaders: How to hold our faith communities together when we can no longer get together? The absence of Sunday gatherings has been difficult for leaders who have invested … Continue reading →
Covid and Sunday Attendance
A couple of conversations this week got me thinking about the ways congregational leaders are responding to the challenge of keeping church going through the ever-lengthening Covid crisis. We are familiar with the talk of shifting from a sprint to … Continue reading →
Who Are We to Hinder God? The Church and Same Sex Marriage
A personal story The issue of same sex marriage and the church is profoundly personal for me. I am a gay man, in a same sex marriage. My husband and I were married in our church, by our minister, in … Continue reading →