Literal interpretation of Bible ‘helps increase church attendance’
Among the key findings are:
- Only 50% of clergy from declining churches agreed it was “very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians”, compared to 100% of clergy from growing churches.
- 71% of clergy from growing churches read the Bible daily compared with 19% from declining churches.
- 46% of people attending growing churches read the Bible once a week compared with 26% from declining churches.
- 93% of clergy and 83% of worshippers from growing churches agreed with the statement “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb”. This compared with 67% of worshippers and 56% of clergy from declining churches.
- 100% of clergy and 90% of worshippers agreed that “God performs miracles in answer to prayers”, compared with 80% of worshippers and 44% of clergy from declining churches.
The study also found that about two-thirds of congregations at growing churches were under the age of 60, whereas two-thirds of congregations at declining churches were over 60.
Actually, Not All Conservative Churches Grow (And Many Don’t Deserve To)
So when you read a blog post that says conservative churches grow, take it with a pinch of salt. Conservatives all too readily fall into the trap of thinking that their conservatism will do what only openness as opposed to tightness; gentleness as opposed to bullying; and gospel ends as opposed to conservative ends in themselves, will actually do.
Fake Facebook posts misleading millions
Here are some of her tips for analyzing news sources:
- Avoid websites that end in “lo.”
- Watch out for sites that end in “.com.co”
- Avoid a lack of coverage
- Watch out for blog posts
- Odd domain names
- Check reviews
George Takei: They interned my family. Don’t let them do it to Muslims.
Stop and consider these words. The internment was a dark chapter of American history, in which 120,000 people, including me and my family, lost our homes, our livelihoods, and our freedoms because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. Higbie speaks of the internment in the abstract, as a “precedent” or a policy, ignoring the true human tragedy that occurred.
Four Reasons Sunday Attire Is Important to Christian Millennials
There is confusion about “giving your best to God.” “Yep, I’ve heard that phrase a few times. For some of our older members, giving your best means wearing their subjective definition of best.” I was listening to the same female Millennial I quoted above. “Did you know the tie that men wear had its origins in the early 17th century? Is that ‘giving your best to God’? I think giving our best is a matter of the heart, not the whitewashed tombs of what we wear on the outside.”
God used this discipline to show me elders are precious gifts to local churches. In the few years after the discipline, God led me to godly men in other healthy local churches. These men taught me the value of the gospel and the importance of rightly representing it corporately and individually. Using my dad’s failures in church leadership, God showed me the immense potential of an elder to either reflect or deface Christ’s love for the church. Having seen it defaced, I hope I—by God’s grace—will rightly reflect Christ’s love and humility. I hope I will always have elders surrounding me who do the same.
The memories we rehearse are the ones we live with
What actually happened was this: After it (whatever that thing you remember) happened, you started telling yourself a story about that event. You began to develop a narrative about this turning point, about the relationship with your dad or with school or with cars.
Lots of people have had similar experiences, but none of them are telling themselves quite the same story about it as you are.
Over time, the story is rehearsed. Over time, the story becomes completely different from what a videotape would show us, but it doesn’t matter, because the rehearsed story is far more vivid than the video ever could be.
And so the story becomes our memory, the story gets rehearsed ever more, and the story becomes the thing we tell ourselves the next time we need to make a choice.
If your story isn’t helping you, work to rehearse a new story instead.
Children of unauthorized immigrants represent rising share of K-12 students
About 3.9 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students in U.S. public and private schools in 2014 – or 7.3% of the total – were children of unauthorized immigrants, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on government data. These estimates reflect an increase since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, when such students numbered 3.6 million and accounted for 6.6% of the total.