7 Ways to Share the Gospel Without Being a Jerk
- Kindness goes a long way.
- Honesty shows and gains respect.
- Ordinary conversations matter most.
- You can only share what you know.
- Share the actual gospel.
- Don’t talk too much. Listen.
- Play the long-game. Persevere.
Three Ways Churches Will Be Impacted in the Revitalization Wave That Is Coming
- About one-third of these churches will revitalize organically.
- About one-third of these churches will revitalize through replanting and/or being acquired.
- About one-third of these churches will decline and die.
How are American Protestant Churches Welcoming Their Guests?
- 96% have an opportunity to meet the pastor after the service.
- 95% have greeters at the entrances.
- 83% have cards guests are asked to complete.
- 78% have a central location where guests can learn about the church.
- 69% set aside time during the service for regular attenders to welcome guests.
- 65% periodically host an information session for new people to learn more about the church.
- 44% have books in the pews for all attenders to indicate they were present that collects visitor information.
- 42% have gifts for guests.
- 24% have greeters or attendants in the parking lot.
- 17% ask guests to stand in the worship service.
Movements Come and Go, the Church Remains
This is why I’ll take the local church over “movements” any day. Yes, God does unique things in history where he refreshes and revives his people. He sends revivals and awakenings. But in order for movements to keep moving, they have to keep pushing the boundaries, which often leads to problems.
Faithful ministry isn’t about pushing boundaries, for the most part. It’s about proclaiming the same gospel truths, again and again.
Russia sent Obama a blunt message about Cuba, and now Trump is giving the edge back to Moscow
“Russia sees it as a moment to further its own relationship with Cuba,” Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, told Reuters in December. “The more the Russian footprint increases in Cuba, the more that will reinforce hardened anti-US attitudes.”
Rhodes has said that Trump curtailing ties with Cuba “delivered a better deal for Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.”
Trump’s moves have also injected more uncertainty at a time of generational political change in Cuba.
The rise of ‘pseudo-AI’: how tech firms quietly use humans to do bots’ work
This practice was brought to the fore this week in a Wall Street Journal article highlighting the hundreds of third-party app developers that Google allows to access people’s inboxes.
In the case of the San Jose-based company Edison Software, artificial intelligence engineers went through the personal email messages of hundreds of users – with their identities redacted – to improve a “smart replies” feature. The company did not mention that humans would view users’ emails in its privacy policy.
It Only Takes an Hour for Bacteria to Spoil Your Picnic Foods
Typically, cooked food is safe to leave out at room temperature for up to two hours, Lifehacker reports. Beyond that, it should be kept out of the “danger zone” of 40°F to 140°F by being either refrigerated or kept hot using a heating source: This keeps bacteria from thriving. But food left outdoors on a warm day (above 90°F) chops that rule in half. Food only has about an hour under the Sun before bacteria like Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus begin to multiply rapidly and greatly increase your chances of falling ill.
How One Nashville Designer Makes Domestic Violence Victims Feel At Home Again
She says the vision from the very beginning was to make domestic abuse survivors feel two things when they walked in their new home: “We want them to feel like somebody cared, and we want to feel like they have hope. The biggest thing is hope. We’re trying to make a difference one home at a time.”