Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have little patience for attempting to run churches by business principles. That’s been weighed in the scale and found wanting every time it’s been attempted. Last evening, as I was prepping for an interview I was to conduct with a supply chain exp...

While I don’t usually have anything to do with the cult of Christian Science (an oxymoron if there ever was one), their Monitor news service remains insightful. Still, it comes as a bit of surprise to see them running an article by the iMonk, Michael Spencer, about the collapse of Evangelicali...

When I began to write this post, I looked for a dozen passages in the Scriptures that Christians in the West largely ignored in practice, despite mentally assenting to the truths contained therein. But what scared me as I delved into this was that far too many passages of the Scriptures are simply i...

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” —Mark 10:27 Read that verse again. Now I want to ask a question: Is it true? If any of us had to think even a split second about the answer, then something’s wrong....

We watched the penultimate teaching from The Truth Project this evening at church. It dealt with labor. I found it a good teaching, showing that work can be a joy because God Himself took joy in His work. Best of all, the teaching touched on the need for Christians to support the arts and those skil...

I’ve been a Christian for 32 years. I’ve worked for or been a part of many churches. A good chunk of my degree work focused on analyzing how churches operate. I think I have some qualifications to express my opinion here. If anyone were to ask me what the one essential ingredient was for...

In Part 1 of this examination of three ideas/trends that rose to prominence in the 19th century, we looked at the industrial revolution, social Darwinism, and postmillennialism and how they fueled each other to wreak enormous societal change. Today, we look at their effects on Western Christianity a...

Most people have never considered the ideas I will be presenting this week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write on this subject (apart from me), either from a Christian or secular perspective. I believe with all my heart that what I write here today and in days to come is key to un...

The local community newspaper listed eight foreclosures in the last week, all residences. That’s just in one week. I had a hard time reading that and not getting misty-eyed. Eight families, no home. At that rate, we’ll have 416 foreclosures in 2009 in my locality. Frankly, given the tren...

These are the tales of several real churches I have known, either because of my own experiences as a member or through the experiences of friends. Each church shares the same peculiar reality. Church A—A long-established congregation in a just-outside-the-city suburb, it flourished with the conflu...