A huge opportunity is available especially to our attractional/traditional churches. Haiti had brought ordinary people out of the woodworks and into action. Others are looking for an outlet to help, express, and make sense of the calamity. What is your church doing about the devastation? Do you have a response? Are you only going to briefly mention Haiti in a blanket prayer to God during service? Will send people to your denominational HQ to give? Does it even change what you're going to do Sunday?

For most, Haiti will merely be a blip on the overall theme for our churches Sunday. It certainly will be mentioned, but the schedule of church (sermon series) won't be bumped by the plight of the poorest nation.

It shouldn't be like this, and I pray my description above the complete opposite of what your church is doing. Continue reading →

Timothy Kellar writes, "In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (luke 7), a religious person and a racial outcast (john 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the religious one does not.... Jesus's teachings consistently attracted the irreligous while offending the bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.." Continue reading →