Religious decline in America? The answer depends on your timeframe
The research methodology for both graphs was the same. What changed was periodization. Start the clock at 1945 instead of 1952, and the line changes dramatically. In fact, the whole narrative changes. A decline becomes a rise and fall, with the uptick at the beginning begging interpretation as much as the slide at the end.
15 Worship Decisions We’ll Regret
- Dividing congregations along age and affinity lines.
- Eliminating choral expressions in worship.
- Worship leader ageism.
- Elevating music above Scripture, Prayer and the Lord’s Supper.
- Making worship and music exclusively synonymous.
- Trying to recreate worship with each new generation.
- Ignoring the Christian Calendar and adopting the Hallmark Calendar.
- Worshiping like inspiration stopped with the hymnal.
- Worshiping like inspiration started with modern worship songs.
- Not providing a venue for creatives to express their art as worship.
- Allowing songs about God to supersede the Word of God.
- Elevating gathered worship above dispersed worship.
- Setting aside traditionalism around the world but not across the aisle.
- Worshiping out of Nostalgia or Novelty.
- Worship services at the expense of worship service.
The Gospel in Three Directions
- The gospel points UPWARD, redirecting our worship.
- The gospel points BACKWARD, restoring our gratefulness.
- The gospel points FORWARD, raising our expectations.
- In contrast, religion points INWARD, toward our failures.
As much as I appreciate the romantic story described by the author of The New York Times post “To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This,” I think it’s terribly misleading, because it offers a formula for falling in love, without an accurate definition of what it really means to fall in love.
Love is so much more than chemistry exchanged between two people at a bar.
Love is deep. Love is commitment. Love is selfless. Love is costly. Love is life-giving. And ultimately, love is a choice. Because maybe anyone can “fall in love,” but more meaningful then that is when we choose to stay in love.
A Different Invitation to Baptism
But instead of traditionally asking people to respond by coming to the front pew before everyone present, I asked them to do something different. I encouraged them to go home, eat lunch, meditate on what we had studied, and pray about their decision to be baptized. I told them I would be at the church building at 2:00 p.m., the doors would be open, and I would be sitting on the front pew praying as I waited on anyone who wished to be baptized for the remission of their sins.
Eight Reasons Why Some Full-time Pastors and Staff Should Go Bivocational
- A secular or marketplace job will put you in the middle of culture on a regular basis.
- Full-time pastors and church staff often get missionally stale in their “holy huddles.”
- Smaller churches are increasingly unable to afford full-time pastors or staff.
- The digital world is offering more opportunities for flexible secular jobs than ever.
- More churches are moving toward multiple teaching/preaching pastors.
- More churches would like to expand staff, but don’t have the resources to do so.
- A bivocational pastor or church staff can have greater freedom than a person in a full-time role.
- A bivocational pastor or staff person has transferrable skills.
Scrambled Fighters: The American Jets Sent Off to Fight World War III
Unfortunately, things went wrong. At Volk Field in Wisconsin, something was amiss with the alarm wiring. The alarm that sounded wasn’t the one signaling a possible saboteur. Instead, it was the one telling nuclear-armed jet fighters to take to the skies. This wasn’t a drill, either—the policies at the time did not allow for such practice runs when on such high alert, as to avoid ambiguity. As far as Volk Field’s personnel believed, World War III had begun. To make matters worse, because of the activity in Cuba, the military had sent nuclear bombers into patrol, some near Volk Field. Had the interceptors ever taken flight, there’s a good chance the American fighters would have shot down their own nuke-laden bombers— and above U.S. soil.
“My friends car got broken into earlier this week,” the YouTube poster wrote. “But the thieves ended up going to Burger King and took selfies of themselves not understanding how the Cloud works. After I posted the photos on reddit someone who went to high school linked me to ‘Dorian’s’ Facebook where he had posted this video to his timeline on January 8th. We alerted the investigators and also decided to save this video in case something ‘happen’ to the one on Facebook.”