State Supreme Court Denies Presbytery Petition for Review of Property Case
On July 18, the Minnesota State Supreme Court denied the petition from the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area (PTCA) to review the decision in favor of Prairie Community Church of Twin Cities
“The Court of Appeals ruled that the District Court was correct when it applied neutral principles of law. Under neutral principles, the court bases its decision in neutral, secular principles, looking at official documents such as property deeds and state statutes.” On July 18, the Minnesota State Supreme Court denied the petition from the... Continue Reading
The Rise of the Nons: Protestants Keep Ditching Denominations
Nondenominational identity has doubled in the US since 2000, Gallup finds
The growing popularity of nondenominational identity is the result of two trends: the decline in the number of Protestants overall, as more Americans eschew any religious affiliation (becoming “the nones”), and shrinking denominations themselves. Ask an American Christian what type of church they belong to, and you’re more likely than ever to hear the... Continue Reading
Politics and What It Means to Be an ‘Evangelical’
White evangelicals are too often represented in the political arena by the likes of Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, and Jerry Falwell Jr., who have decided to go “all in” with Trump
“If politics is not and never has been the center of my life in church, why would I leave my church (for what else can “leaving evangelicalism” typically mean?) because lots of self-identifying evangelicals, including some at my church, voted for Trump?” The election of Donald Trump has elicited a great deal of frustration... Continue Reading
Doers and Delegators
Doing rather than delegating may not be quite as noble as it at first appears.
Many ministries within the local church fail to thrive or even collapse altogether because the leader of that ministry is an eager doer but reluctant delegator. When there is a difficult situation or when a key person fails to show up, her first instinct is to just do the task herself. This may be a... Continue Reading
But Seriously Chris Tomlin, Good Hymns Don’t Need Your New Choruses
Repackaged hymns aren’t really hymns at all; they are contemporary songs with old words. The words are reworked, and the tunes intended for congregational singing, are made into commercially marketable products.
According to the CCLI database, “The Wonderful Cross” was written by Chris Tomlin, Isaac Watts, J.D. Walt, Jesse Reeves, and Lowell Mason. By doing so, Tomlin, Walt, and Reeves have hijacked Watts’ poetry (Mason composed the tune, HAMBURG), added a very minimal contribution of their own, copyrighted it, and have proceeded to financially benefit from... Continue Reading
How ‘Woke Theology’ is Weakening the Black Church
Social change is accomplished through heart change; and heart change is fundamentally what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about
In whatever sense people may or may not view Jesus as a “liberator”, as does Cone, He is first and foremost the Liberator of human beings from the bondage of sin through His propitiatory death on the cross (Rom. 6:10; 1 Jn. 3:5). It is this spiritual liberation that the Black Church – and the Church universal – must again... Continue Reading
The Religious Left’s Abortion Gospel
"At the Intersection of Faith and Reproductive Justice,” which pleased the largely leftist, overflow audience of over 100 people and gave disturbing insight into the Religious Left’s bizarre support for the abortion gospel.
The panelists like CAP’s Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative Vice President LaShawn Warren dismissed any Judeo-Christian objections to abortion advocacy. “There are conservatives who will raise a few biblical passages primarily from the Book of Jeremiah and Job about reproductive healthcare,” yet the “Bible has very little to say about abortion.” The “trained theo-ethicist” Leonard concurred that the “Bible didn’t say... Continue Reading
What I Learned from Two Failed Church Mergers
In my estimation, it takes 3 to 12 months to learn enough about a church to make a decision to merge.
There is always an initial excitement about a new opportunity, but this is just the honeymoon phase. Then come questionable impressions about motives, actions, behaviors, etc. This is a tough stage to get past—this second time, we didn’t make it. We were still too much about business and “getting the job done.” I wish we’d... Continue Reading
Liturgy, Priesthood and Genuine Worship
And the issue of ‘appropriate expression’ is a question that needs to be addressed, regardless of which ‘wing’ of the debate to which we may happen to belong.
In all of this, we must never lose sight of the fact that worship as presented and exemplified in scripture is never without form and direction. It has an inherent logic and rationale that was literally built in to the architecture and furnishings of Old Testament temple worship as the God-given replica and preview of... Continue Reading
Remember the Rural: Does Modern Church Planting Overemphasize the City?
In recent years, however, this interest in the urban has sometimes turned into a superiority of the urban, and even a disdain of the rural.
Robinson tackles a widespread (and near-consensus) belief among modern scholars that the earliest Christians were almost exclusively urban. Ever since Wayne Meek’s The First Urban Christians (and even before it), scholars have been pretty convinced that the earliest Christian missionaries focused almost entirely on cities. Such scholarship has been used to support much of the modern impetus... Continue Reading
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