My mate Stewart is working on his dissertation.
He’s been working on it long enough that I may never want to go back and get my Masters degree ;-).
And in his dissertation he’s writing about the institutional church.
Continue reading Is the institutional church in decline?
I talked with a local pastor about his new church plant last week.
I thought this was interesting. What’s your take on it?
“We want to be progressive,” the pastor said. “Our music is praise and worship music along with singing out of the hymnal. It’s a combination of the two.”
Then immediately after that comment his wife made sure to say, “But you won’t see us bringing coffee into the church. We’re bringing reverence into church.”
Does coffee take away reverence in church? Is progressive all about singing “praise and worship?” Can you be progressive and reverent at the same time – or are the two mutual exclusive? What makes a church progressive and what makes it reverent?
It was interesting that they said they wanted to reach out to the unchurched but then complained about visiting another local church where people sitting around them were talking during the service.
Could it be that those people were unchurched and weren’t aware of our “Christian way of doing things?”
There was a couple at my church yesterday that was sitting behind me and talking during the service as well. Personally I just tuned them out, but not everyone can do that. I know several people turned around and looked at them, but I wonder how many actually stopped and welcomed them. They didn’t look like anyone I recognized. I would guess it was one of the first times at our church. Hope they weren’t kicked out or sent to time-out for talking.