Tag: churches

The missing message in today’s church

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian writes:

America’s churches came back into the media limelight a few weeks ago after a well-publicized Pew study showed a meteoric rise of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, shooting up from seven percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2010. The percentage more than doubled for those under the age of 30, reaching almost 35 percent. The group is now being referred to as “the religious nones.”

He points to a great article by Rachel Held Evans that what millennials really want from church is a change in substance.

He continues:

As someone who loves the church, I am saddened by the perception of Christianity as a vehicle of moral control and good behavior, rather than a haven for the discouraged and dying. It is high time for the church to remind our broken and burned out world that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a one-way declaration that because Jesus was strong for you, you’re free to be weak; because Jesus won for you, you’re free to lose; because Jesus succeeded for you, you’re free to fail.

Grace and rest and absolution – with no new strings or anxieties attached–now that would be a change in substance.

How freeing would that be for you to receive today?

And do you agree – is this message missing from today’s churches?

I’m not buying it – The Super Bowl & Sex Trade

I'm Not Buying It
I'm Not Buying It | traffick911.com

Traffick911 in the Dallas area has launched a number of PSAs just in time for the Super Bowl to raise awareness and to help fight human trafficking.

According to recent stats, 15% of all phone calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline come from Texas and it’s estimated that an event like the Super Bowl will bring hundreds (if not thousands) of young girls to the area for the sole purpose of being prostituted to the football enthusiasts.
Continue reading I’m not buying it – The Super Bowl & Sex Trade

Churches in Kaufman County (and beyond)

As we’ve moved to the northwest corner of Kaufman County, the search has begun for a new community of faith to take part in.

Google has been helpful as we’ve begun our search, but I thought I’d make a listing of churches in Kaufman County and areas surrounding Forney (Sunnyvale, Heath, Rockwall, Talty, etc) similar to what I had in Ellis County.

If by chance I’ve left off any churches, feel free to drop me a note and I’ll be sure to add it ASAP.

Crandall churches:

Central Baptist
Church of Christ
Crandall United Methodist
First Baptist
First Community Church
The Lord’s House of Prayer
Maranatha Baptist

Cottonwood churches:

Cottonwood Baptist

Gun Barrel churches:

Legendary Baptist

Heartland churches:

Heartland First Baptist
Vista Church

Heath churches:

First Baptist
First Christian
First United Methodist
Freedom Chapel
Holy Trinity by the Lake
Lakeshore
Our Savior Lutheran

Forney churches:

Beacon Hill Baptist
Calvary Chapel Forney
c|Life
Covenant Generations
Crossroads Bible
Fellowship Baptist
First Baptist
First Presbyterian
First United Methodist
Forney Church of Christ
Lake Pointe Forney
Mustang Creek Community
New River
People’s Fellowship
Seven Oaks Fellowship
St. Martin of Tours
Thrive
Trinity Family
Water of Life Lutheran

Kaufman churches:

Country Bible
First Baptist
First Presbyterian
First United Methodist
Grace Fellowship
Kaufman Church of Christ
Kaufman County Christian Center
Kaufman County Cowboy Church (there’s no location info on their site – I’m assuming it’s in Kaufman)
Life Church
Oak Hill/Kaufman Foursquare
Southside Baptist
St. Ann
Trinity Southern Baptist
Wade Chapel AME

Mabank churches:

Cowboy Church
First Baptist
First United Methodist
Mabank Church of Christ
Prairieville Baptist

Sunnyvale churches:

Berean Baptist
Grace Fellowship
Higher Ground
Life Community Church
Long Creek Baptist
New Hope Church
New Covenant United Methodist
Sunnyvale First Baptist

Terrell churches:

College Mound United Methodist
Cornerstone Baptist
CrossPoint Community
Emmanuel Baptist
First Baptist
First Christian Church
First Presbyterian
First United Methodist
Greater McIntyre Chapel
Rafter J Cowboy Church
St. John the Apostle
Terrell Bible

Seth Godin talks church

Marketing guru Seth Godin gave an interview to StreamingFaith.com. They naturally talked church and social media/marketing ::

Faith matters. A lot. Religion often gets in the way of faith. Religion, the scolding, rules-based part of religion, the part used as a lever in life or politics to insist that people follow a certain person or a certain idea… that’s not spreading so fast online.

But faith, faith is the salve we’ve always wanted and still want. Barack Obama offers a lot of people a different kind of faith, and we can see how it resonates. People want to believe, they want to be surrounded by people who believe and they want to feel good about it. What an opportunity.

(HT @stewartcutler – btw you can hear @stewartcutler and @headphonaught chat about advent on this week’s @sbpodcast)

Social networking and the church

I’ve written about social networking (i.e. MySpace, Facebook, etc) here before. I’ve also written about the idea of churches getting behind these networks and putting them to use for marketing, announcements, building community, etc. etc.

I haven’t heard a lot of feedback other than on the techie side of things. I read recently about Mars Hill’s social networking strategy over at digital.leadnet.org.

Here’s an overview:

  • Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Facebook profile has 4000 friends
  • Less than 20% of these friends are from the Seattle area
  • He has apps to read in his blog, link to his books from Amazon, play videos from their Ask Anything sermon series, and read in Mars Hill RSS feeds
  • He gets 20 messages and wall posts a day
  • Mark Driscoll’s Myspace profile has 400 friends

In addition to this, Dustin told digital.leadnet about an internal project they’re working on – “Our IT department is currently developing our own social network, the City, that will be used for almost all communication within the church.” More info on their soon-to-launch social network here.

This is very cool in my book (of course Mars Hill apparently has a full IT team and their own blog). They’re building the site on Ruby on Rails. Not real familiar with that software or “programing language” but it looks cool. I’m looking at doing something with Elgg.org for now. But I’m seeing more folks using Ruby on Rails. Might be worth looking into.

So the techies are interested in all this and implementing it – but for me part of the thrill of implementing a social network for encounter or other churches is the challenge aspect of it. I wonder how enthused average users or church members would be in using it.

So I put together a quick survey over on the encounter blog. I’ve plugged it via our Twitter feed, our Facebook group, a MySpace bulletin and of course here. I’d encourage you to take a second and fill out the form, regardless of if you’re an active part of encounter or not. And I’d love for you to push the survey on your own blogs as well. The more input the better.

And yes – you can remain anonymous in filling out the form.

Twitter peeps

So you’re browsing SSL and you see this box on the right hand side that says Twitter updates.
Currently (as of 8:26 a.m. on Jan 29) it shows:

  • what happens when you live alone and die alone > who picks up the pieces? http://tinyurl.com/yto2or 21 minutes ago
  • Listening 2 this american life podcast podcast on the bus about an hour ago
  • Cant find my keys about an hour ago
  • The new Casa de Blundell is live :: http://tinyurl.com/27cyj2 about an hour ago
  • time to take out the trash and head off to work… now where’s the dog at? about an hour ago
  • Getting my morn caffeine fix while checking email about an hour ago

Wait, you haven’t noticed this yet? Well go check it out. We’ll wait for you….

OK now that we’ve all seen it, you’re probably asking, OK so what is it? It’s my Twitter feed. The feed displays everything I add to my Twitter account throughout the day.
Now explaining Twitter might be a little bit harder.

Twitter.com is another one of those fancy Web 2.0 sites that is built around community and 140 character text messages. The site asks the basic question, “What are you doing?”

Users then respond throughout the day with their own activities, thoughts, notes and what not. There’s even a channel set up for things people overheard in their day-to-day lives. You’ll find all sorts of things happening, or being mico-blogged about on Twitter.

ESPN has a feed that alerts people with the latest NFL news. College professors are Twittering with their students. Folks are sharing their insight from the Sundance Festival. Reporters are sharing insight on the presidential race and MacRumors abound.

So what’s the big deal? Well once you sign up for your free Twitter account you can follow any of these feeds, including mine, to can get the updates from your own Twitter page, via txt message or e-mail. And what amazes me is the community that’s built around Twitter. I’ve mentioned this before, but thanks to Twitter and his blog, I know more about Thomas and his life in Scotland than I do about my friends and family that live within 20-30 miles. That’s good and bad — but for this blog entry, we’ll go with the good ;-).

We’re also starting to use Twitter for encounter. We’re posting info on upcoming events and hope to start using it for prayer request notices as more encounter peeps get on board.

Kevin Hendricks over at CMS has more suggestions for Twitter as well (who by the way kept me entertained/informed last week on living life without a furnace via his Twitter feed):

The main thing to keep in mind is that Twitter is just another medium. It could be a volunteer coordinator or an evangelism tool. Experiment and see what works:

  • Ask questions: Sermon research, who’s coming to an event, what people might be interested in, etc.
  • Share insights: Maybe it’s a quote from a sermon, maybe it’s a sudden insight from a Bible study.
  • Highlight content: Point people to blog posts, articles or resources on your church web site.
  • Hype events: Remind people of events and give a glimpse of what they’re missing.

So that’s about it. Now go for it. Twitter away.