How can churches know if they are being effective at making disciples?
Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those things can be counted, but not as easily as offerings.
The perceived growth of Christianity in Singapore and other nations in Asia is not an unqualified blessing in the view of an Indian theologian.
"Much of the numerical Christian growth in our nations is superficial," said Dr Vinoth Ramachandra in a series of lectures he gave at Trinity Theological College which the college compiled and published as a book in 2009.
This was the same year a South Asian Christianity researcher who was invited to give the lectures that year had concluded that the quality of the large number of conversions in recent years in Singapore is questionable.
“Large churches (including those that send out many cross-cultural missionaries to other parts of Asia) seem to have little transformative impact on their neighbourhoods and culture,” said Dr Ramachandra, stressing that the primary task of the Church is not ‘missions’ and discipleship – what he described as activism.
Rather the Church’s task is “simply being the Church; a radically new community in which social, cultural and economic barriers between peoples are broken down and men and women learn to love their traditional and personal enemies,” the Secretary for Dialogue and Social Engagement for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) said in ‘Church and Mission in the New Asia: New Gods, New Identities’.
Gordon MacDonald's articles and books are insightful and are always worth the reading. I like this article where he applies principles from Jim Collins' book How the Mighty Fall to church leadership.
Soon after I finished my theological education, I was asked to become pastor of a congregation in Southern Illinois. This was my first great awakening to the realities of pastoral leadership, and it was an uncomfortable experience.
The skills (or gifts) that led the congregation to invite me to be their spiritual leader were probably my enthusiasm, my preaching, and my apparent ability, even as a young man, to reach out to people and make them feel cared for.
The position description called for me to report to a board of deacons who, while well-intentioned, were not highly experienced in organizational leadership. It also said that I was responsible to lead a staff that consisted of a secretary, a Christian education assistant, two day-school teachers, a part-time choir director, and a janitor.
What it didn't say was that the congregation was seriously divided and disillusioned due to an acrimonious split in which the previous pastor had persuaded a hundred people to join him in leaving the church to form a new one down the road.
Do Youth Ministries Cause Problems for the Church?
In this interview, researcher Kara Powell makes an interesting observation. One of the reason we are losing our young people from attending church is due to our approach of age-segregation ministries. We separate people into ages-group activities when they are young and then expect them to attend church when they are older. Will age-segregation ministries goes the way of homogeneous unit principle? My mentor, Dr Allan Harkness, which researches in intergenerational ministries will be happy to hear this.
A researcher argues that the future of youth ministry will require bringing the generations together.
An Interview with Kara Powellposted 9/18/2009
The statistics are grim. Rainer Research estimates that 70 percent of young people leave the church by age 22. Barna Group argues that the figure increases to 80 percent by age 30. The Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest denomination, recently observed that growth in their churches is failing to keep up with the birth rate. Taken together, these findings suggest a startling fact: not only are we failing to attract younger worshipers, we're not holding on to the ones we have.
As executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary and a former youth pastor, Kara Powell has her eyes on the youth drop out trend. She is currently in the midst of a three-year College Transition Project, a study that involves over 400 youth group graduates and is focused on understanding how parents, churches, and youth ministries can set students on a trajectory of lifelong faith and service. Though research is ongoing, it is already revealing a promising pattern: youth involved in intergenerational relationships in church are showing promise for stronger faith in high school and beyond.
Leadership editors Marshall Shelley and Brandon O'Brien spoke with Kara about her research and what it means for the local church.
In the comparatively short span of two decades, City Harvest Church has become the largest congregation in Singapore.
And yet, for many pastors and believers, the phenomenal growth of the church is at best a mystery or a feat of which only a few are capable.
At worst, it is a tell-tale ‘sign’ of the shallowness of faith and lack of discipleship of the members.
For The Rev Dr Kong Hee, who founded CHC, the growth was unexpected.
Two themes emerged in the course of the email interview he graciously accepted from The Christian Post.
It was primarily the clear vision of God’s passion and calling to the believers and the relentless obedience of the small group of individuals that pioneered the church that enabled CHC to succeed in its outreach.
Church Growth in Latin American -Neo-Pentecostalism
Power Pentecostalisms The 'non-Catholic' Latin American church is going full steam ahead—but are we on the right track? By Milton Acosta
Milton Acosta is professor of Old Testament at Biblical Seminary of Colombia in Medellín, Colombia. In this very interesting article, he comments on the phenomenon church growth in Latin America and what he observes as "Neo-Pentecostalism." This is a must read article.
Christian spirituality is the interaction of my daily life, my Christian belief, my thoughts, my dealing with people, and my experience of God. Here are my random musings and reflections on life, God and all that stuff
Christ and culture, movies & anime, comics & manga, medicine, child health, science fiction, spirituality, mysticism, spiritual formation, spiritual direction, Christian education, medical and theological education, learning theories, biomedical ethics, post modern parenting, books, religions, theology and philosophy
DISCIPLESHIP
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