Jonathan D. Blundell

I normally post stories like this on my Nigerian Blog, but thought this was interesting for a broader audience.
From the BBC:

Nigerian pastor finds new flock in Ukraine
Sunday Adelaja started with a just handful of followers
Inside one of Ukraine’s biggest sports halls a band pumps out deafening music surrounded by pom pom-waving dancers in shiny blue outfits.
Thousands of people are on their feet enthusiastically singing and clapping along, as if at a pop concert.
A Pentecostal church called the Embassy of God is sweeping across the country.
It claims to have 25,000 members in the capital alone.

What I find really interesting about this is that the orthodox church in Ukraine believes the church is a cult.

The Orthodox Church feels threatened. It says Embassy of God is a cult.
“The followers become like zombies – they are fully devoted to the leader of the organisation, ready to fulfil any of his desires,” says Father Superior Yevstratiy Zorya, spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Kiev.
“It also has an impact on political life, because these people help to campaign for the politicians loyal to their church.”
The Embassy of God says there is no brainwashing. Instead it targets people who feel rejected by society.

I wonder if the members are really devoted to the leader of The Embassy of God, or the leader of the church as a whole, God Himself. Ever think you or your church could be described as zombies – fully devoted to God, ready to fulfil His will?
What would that look like?
What would that sound like?
What kind of impact would that have on the world?

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…

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.

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?

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.