Attending a Church With 50 Members is Good For You (You Just Don't Realize It)

If you talk to church leaders – it won't matter what tribe you ask – they will likely tell you that attendance is down in their local congregation. Very few churches these days report numerical growth and many are in steady decline. That's bad news right? The problem with this issue is that there is …

You Don't Want a McMansion?

It's amazing how huge shifts in cultural attitudes can sneak up on us. In the July 14 Issue of The Economist (I had some time at Chapters OK?) Steve Klineberg says that people's attitudes about housing and life are changing, and changing fast! He writes that, In 2008 59% in the US said they would …

Why Are Young Christians Leaving The Church?

In preparation for a presentation I was doing at Great Lakes Lectures I read a great book recently.  You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith (published by Baker Books)  is written by David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a research group in the US that studies the intersection between …

A Church of Hands and Hearts Not Brick and Mortar

I had a chance to have lunch with some minister friends this week and the conversation turned to congregational life: what's up, what's good, what's bad. One of us is struggling with what to do when you've got 31 different languages spoken at your church. People who are living here in Canada but their heart, …

Dying to Tell the Truth

In my history class last semester we spent part of one class debating whether it was a positive thing over all that Constantine legalized Christianity in 325 A.D. You might think that it's an absurd question, “Of course it was good! People were dying by the thousands. If he hadn't called off the persecution all …