Month: October 2006

Nigerians continue to fly

From the BBC:

Nigerians fly despite the risks
Nigeria’s government plans to consolidate the airline industry
Years of neglect and lack of investment in basic infrastructure and weak regulatory control mean flying in Nigeria has long been risky.
Sunday’s crash of an ADC Boeing 737 into a cornfield just 2km (1.2 miles) from Abuja’s main airport was the third major airline disaster in a year.
The spiritual leader of Nigeria’s 70 million Muslims, the sultan of Sokoto, two senators and the son of a former president were among the 96 who died.
Nigerians are grieving but angry too.
Just over a year ago, a passenger jet operated by Bellview went down near Lagos, killing 117 people.
Seven weeks later, a plane operated by the Nigerian airline Sosoliso crashed on landing in the southern city of Port Harcourt, killing 106 people, half of whom were children.

Bell on Wheels

From the Chris Bell campaign:

We’re busy packing right now here at the Bell Campaign, getting ready to hit the road tomorrow morning for the statewide bus tour we’re calling “Bell on Wheels.”For a brief moment we thought of naming it the “We’re Way More Prouder of Texas Tour” or the “Rolling Slick Rick Retirement Rallyrama 2006,” but in the end, cooler, more PR-savvy heads prevailed. So Bell on Wheels we’ll be, and we’re coming to a town near you…

Reasons for leaving the church

Lifeway and Churchrelevance share these results on why people leave the church in the first place:

59% of those who left the church did so because of “changes in life situation.”
— 19% “simply got too busy to attend church.”
— 17% said “family/home responsibilities prevented church attendance.”
— Other reasons explained were moving too far from the church, work situation and divorce or separation.
37% leave because of “disenchantment with pastor/church.”
— 17% said church members “seemed hypocritical” and “were judgmental of others.”
— 12% said “the church was run by a clique that discouraged involvement.”
80% of the formerly churched do not have a strong belief in God, which the study indicated may account for their higher priorities of work and family over church.
42% said they are “Christian, but not particularly devout.”
24% consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.”
19% said they are “a devout Christian with a strong belief in God.”
16% of those who left the church said nobody contacted them after they left.
16% said nobody seemed to care that they left.
14% said the church was not helping them develop spiritually.
14% said they stopped believing in organized religion.
10% confessed to wavering on Christianity.
6% said they were wavering on belief in God.

Reaching the unchurched

Despite our history of being a “Christian nation,” more and more people are leaving the church and joining the unchurched. Churchrelevance.com reports on a new LifeWay report that investigates why people leave and come back to church.

The Probability
62% of the formerly churched adults said they are open to the idea of attending church regularly again, but not actively looking.
28% said they are unlikely to consider regularly attending church in the foreseeable future.
6% said they would prefer to resume attending regularly in the same church they had attended.
4% said they are actively looking for a different church to attend regularly.
The average formerly churched adult has not attended regularly for 14 years.

The Catalyst
58% said they simply felt that it was time to return to the church.
41% said a friend or acquaintance invited them.
35% said they would return if they knew there were people there like them.
31% felt that God was calling them to visit the church.
25% said they would resume if their children asked them to go with them to church.
25% said they would go if an adult family member invited them.

The Motivation
(For the large majority who were self-motivated to return to church)
46% said it was to bring them closer to God.
32% want to be around those with similar values.
31% want to make friends.
30% want to make a difference of help others in their community.

How does your church reach out to the unchurched? If not, why not?

How evangelicals fell for Bush

The New Republic has an interesting review of “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction” By David Kuo

“Tempting Faith” is the story of how David Kuo, an unassuming if ambitious young man, discovered the wonder-filled joy flowing from devotion to a force more powerful than himself. I don’t mean that he found God, although Kuo, by his own account, first encountered Jesus in high school. When Kuo tells us how he got “hooked,” the object of his reverence lived not in Nazareth, but in Austin. “He seemed not just charming, but weighty, seductive yet pure, likeable but mysterious,” he writes of his first meeting with then-governor George W. Bush. “I couldn’t tell whether his disclosures were private revelations to someone he liked or just part of a pitch to someone he might need. I didn’t much care. I loved him.”
Neither theological brilliance nor grace-earning humility on the governor’s part caused Kuo to succumb. It was all about the bottle. “Watching him, I couldn’t miss the evidence of the former drunk, the lost soul who had fallen to his knees sobbing before God; the sinner who had become God’s own.” For Kuo, being a Christian means sharing your journey. “When Christians like me share the stories of how we came to believe in Jesus and what his presence means in our lives,” he writes, “it is called a testimony. It is deeply personal, deeply intimate, and shared with fellow Christians as well as with those we hope are open to accepting Jesus.” Bush’s testimony–how he lost his way, how Billy Graham pointed him in the right direction–established his sincerity. My goodness, Kuo goes on, you just had to see the man when his path crossed with that of an addict. “Any swagger disappeared. Something softer and perhaps more genuine took its place. He listened to each story and nodded. He seemed more like a counselor than a politician. When this happened–just a few times I was around–he didn’t hurry and didn’t rush. It was one of the more Christ-like things I have ever seen a powerful man do.” This is Noonanism with a born-again face. For Kuo, Karl Rove is “nice” and has “a soft heart,” Karen Hughes is filled with “sensitivity,” and even Dick Cheney has “a surprising jocularity.” Surprising, indeed.

Unleash your creative spirit

Church Relevance has a good entry today on finding your creative spirit/genius:

Four Ways to Unleash Your Creative Genius
We all possess the ability to be creative. Often a little creativity is all that is needed to make a sermon stick or an advertisement memorable. To get your creative juices flowing, consider these 4 tips published by USA Today two months ago:

  • Explore an unfamiliar area of knowledge. For example, people who use a lot of math on the job should sign up for a painting class.
  • Spend time each day thinking. Don’t censor your thoughts, but allow your mind to go freely to a problem and see what kinds of solutions or ideas surface.
  • Practice the art of paying attention. Look for and really observe a person, an object or something in your daily commute that you hadn’t really noticed before. Try describing or drawing that object in a journal or sketchbook.
  • Use your imagination. Spend time each day imagining a different world. What would it look like? What would you do there?

    Creativity is about exposing yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking and learning how to harness the key principles your diverse knowledge to improve something. It is important that ministers never stop learning and never stop improving.