The Most Ignored and Undervalued People Within Churches Today
Below are categories of people that I’ve repeatedly witnessed being underappreciated within various church environments, and while tons of additional information could be added regarding each group, I’ve written brief descriptions summarizing my opinions.
5 Important Areas to Increase Your Church’s Spending on Next Year
There are no prizes for spending the least amount of money … the goal is to spend every dollar that our people give to us on expenses that will push the ministry forward. We’re called to find high leverage opportunities that will help us achieve our mission more quickly.
Why I am still in the church of Christ
By the way, for you non church of Christers who read this, we are a strange group to belong to because we are no group. No national organization. No organization of any kind. No “official” doctrine either. But we do have some general convictions that most church of Christ congregations share.
So here is why I stay.
Where did Earliest Christians Meet?
But Adams questions whether the term “house churches” should continue to be used at all for early Christian groups. The expression isn’t found in ancient texts, and he finds the it “deeply associated with the modern house church movement” so that “in applying it to early churches, it is difficult to avoid thereby implying that they are homologous with house churches of modern times.” So, he urges, “the category ‘house church/churches’ should be dropped altogether from New Testament and Early Christian studies” (202).
10 Suggestions for Healthy Grieving
As much as we need to know how to grieve, however, I continually meet people who either don’t know how or refuse to allow themselves to grieve. I’ve even met well-meaning believer who believe they shouldn’t. The Scripture is clear. We do grieve. We simply don’t grieve like the rest of the world.
There’s a number of things that need to be said but, first of all, we need to recognise how fragile we are. These men were more gifted and more able than I ever will be. They are bright guys who were, in lots of our eyes, ‘successful’ in ministry. I’ve prayed with these men and shared in ministry with them. After meeting with them I came away upset and sad and slightly afraid; the reason being it could have been me. No one who has met with people who’ve just seen their lives implode and the speed at which sin can destroy a man can ever be proud. You can be angry with them and what they’ve done but you’ll be more aware of the fact that it could so easily have been me.
Want/Need to Make Better Decisions? – Consider the WRAP Process from the Heath Brothers
The Heath brothers propose just such a process – actually, a few different process options — that will help us make better choices, better decisions. It is the WRAP Process. This is spelled out in detail in the useful book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.
Here it is, with the “four villains” that undermine good decision making, along with their proposed solution for each. These are summarized in their WRAP Process.
Costco in Simi Valley labels Bibles as fiction; pastor disagrees
For its part, Costco released a statement to Fox News, saying a distributor had mislabeled a “small percentage” of Bibles before sending them to the store.
“However, we take responsibility and should have caught the mistake. We are correcting this with them for future distribution,” Costco said. All mislabeled Bibles were also immediately relabeled.
Army email advising use of ‘average looking women’ in photos draws fire
The U.S. Army is drawing some unfriendly fire about an email obtained by POLITICO recommending that photos of “average-looking women” should be used for stories about female soldiers.