PomoTheo will take in a conference in Edmonton with Alan Hirsch Monday-Wednesday. We'll keep you posted of the highlights as much we can. No audio or video but I'm sure some interesting ideas will come out especially given he's conversing with the C&MA, the most attractional evangelical denomination in Alberta..... Should be fun!
http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/2009/04/church-planting-bibliography.html
Great resource courtesy of Ed Stetzer.
Have you seen those big box buildings lately, the ones that house 1-2 thousands adherents every Sunday? At one point they were the glowing pride of some Christian denominations. Nowadays there is a growing rumbling that big churches aren't as efficient as the model would assume.
Back in the 80's all the way into the 2000's there was a growing movement in mostly Protestant evangelical churches to grow by leaps and bounds. That wasn't anything new, but how they did it was.
Most of the churches that housed white collar businessmen used similar strategies that worked for profit maximizing organizations and in turn applied it to the church. That meant organizational structures with boards and CEOs, high value of visions and strategies, and focus on efficiency and development of core ministries. Continue reading
Note: Posted Jan 27, 2009, updated on March 31, 2009 and again on April 22nd, 2009.
Seems as though I'm not the only one touting the demise of evangelicalism, much to the chagrin to denominationally loyal people. I wrote a piece a few days ago that took a bit longer than usual to put together. I wanted to ensure I was communicating my ideas coherently and without [too much] cynicism laced between my words. The basic premise was evangelicalism can only go so far with 'missionality' so long as they exist within their paradigm box. At the bottom I mentioned this in my article Spectrums of Missionality:
...doing 'just enough' [to remain relevant & pay bills] is not good enough, especially in a time where once prominent evangelical denominations are quickly becoming ineffective like their mainline counterparts found out 30 years ago.
Although I had a Canadian context in mind, turns out I'm not alone with my doom and gloom sentiments. Continue reading
I was re-reading Tim Keller's online intro article to the missional church and something struck me.
One of the reasons much of the American evangelical church has not experienced the same precipitous decline as the Protestant churches of Europe and Canada is because in the U.S. there is still a 'heartland' with the remnants of the old 'Christendom' society.
This blog offers a dialogue on the missional church, but with a Canadian slant. The component above that fueled this post was:
...American evangelical church has not experienced the same precipitous decline as the Protestant churches of Europe and Canada....