christianity

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not just a day

As millions of Americans travel and look forward to sitting down on this Thanksgiving Day, many will eat until their gut is full. Turkey, ham, and mashed potatoes will be consumed and football will be played or watched. As Americans celebrate this Thanksgiving Day as a holiday, do we really understand the significance of giving thanks?

The origins of Thanksgiving are well storied and documented in our cultural conscience. Picnic tables of Native Americans and European settlers sharing corn, turkey, and bread come to mind. However, the reality of the first Thanksgiving was much more dark and difficult.

Most of those who celebrated the first Thanksgiving were English religious dissenters in 1621. Many traveled to America on just a word or hope of a better life. Long voyages, illness, and harsh winters left many to die. To come through such a journey led to giving thanks. We only have a handful of first hand accounts of what the first Thanksgiving was like. After a drought, William Bradford wrote in 1623:

Leadership

Are your church greeters and ushers trained?

Do you have associate or assistant ministers in your church? Are you an associate pastor? Get a copy of my book, The Work of the Associate Pastor. This valuable resource will set associates and churches up for success.

First impressions are huge for church visitors. The average church visitor has made up their mind within 3-4 minutes of coming into a church whether they will return. That is why your church needs well trained church greeters and ushers.

Charles Arn of BuildingChurchLeaders.com writes,

The communication that occurs in the first four minutes of human contact is so crucial that it almost always determines whether strangers will remain strangers or become acquaintances and perhaps friends. If this is true, and it applies to all who walk through our church doors, what an opportunity and challenge it provides to greeters! Those church members who welcome the people God has brought to church have the chance to positively influence these important vistors in those first crucial minutes. In the process, it is the greeters who often hold the key to whether guests return.

Greeters provide a valuable ministry to churches. Here are some basics on church greeters and ushers:

NFL

RG3, false persecution, and Christianity

There’s a big uproar over Robert Griffin III reversing his shirt inside out at a press conference. RG3’s shirt read, “Know Jesus Know Peace” or “No Jesus No Peace”. (Cool play on words there.)

Over at Fox News, they are creating a controversy. On the Fox and Friends Facebook page, they posted the above picture with the text:

Out of Bounds! At a post-game press conference, Washington Redskins’ quarterback Robert Griffin III was told to turn his shirt inside out before speaking to reporters! Do you think he should have been allowed to wear his shirt as-is?

Of course, the implication here is that RG3 was not allowed to wear his Jesus t-shirt because it was religious in nature. Fox News has a history of creating the idea that Christianity is being persecuted in America.

If Fox News wanted to do some reporting, they would have found the following:

blog, Islam

Christian news site scrubs Islamophobic opinion

I opened Facebook this morning to read this headline, “Why I Am Absolutely Islamaphobic”. I clicked the link and read the opinion piece by Rev. Gary Cass and was disgusted by what I read.

I posted the Charisma News article on my Facebook page only to find that the original post was pulled: there is a 404 error. Brian McLaren has a lively comment section on his Facebook page.

I think it is obvious what happened here. After such blow back from Christians, Charisma had to delete the article. David Hayward (NakedPastor.com) has a good response. I mean come on, the title explains that this pastor and CEO of a “Christian defamation” organization is clearly anti-Isalm. Gary even has his own page over at Right Wing Watch – so you know he’s legit.

Here’s a few nuggets of Cass’ craziness from the original opinion article:

My fear is not an irrational fear based on uniformed prejudice; rather it’s an historic, clear eyed, informed, rational fear. ISSA is doing to America journalists what every true follower of Mohammed wants to do to you and yours; subjugate or murder you. They believe they have been given a mandate by Allah (Satan) to dominate the world.

And then Cass paints all Muslims with one brush stroke: Continue Reading…

Christianity

Church sign responds to border crisis

As thousands of people stream into the United States from Mexico, people have spoken out against the government’s handling of the border crisis. Children are coming into the United States from Mexico and looking for a better life. Some have criticized the Christian response, or lack there of.

What are Christians supposed to say about this problem?

Some are holding public prayer events. Like this one in Texas:

The collective prayer marked the beginning of “For His Children,” a charity initiative that seeks to provide undocumented migrants with both physical and spiritual support. The event, according to ABP news, was organized by the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and three other charitable organizations.

More than 50 Hispanic pastors prayed at the facility where the undocumented children are processed upon arrival, at the Border Patrol station, and at Sacred Heart — a Catholic church where volunteers have set up a temporary shelter where families can rest before setting out to meet relatives across the United States.

One church took a rather pointed position on the crisis with their church sign. Thinking about would Jesus would not say, College Avenue Presbyterian Church in Oakland, CA posted this sign:

Leadership

The case for the 45 credit seminary degree

The Atlantic ran a disturbing article on the state of middle class clergy carrying a seminary degree: high debt, low wages, vanishing churches, and part-time pastor positions. The piece profiles Justin Barringer, a recent seminary grad who like many before him graduated the call to pastoral ministry. His story is not unlike thousands of other ministers:

Justin Barringer would seem to have the perfect résumé. He’s a seminary grad, an author and book editor, and a former missionary to China and Greece. But despite applying to nearly a hundred jobs over the course of two years, Barringer, who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, could not secure a full-time, salaried church position.

So he splits his time among three jobs, working as a freelance editor, an employee at a nonprofit for the homeless, and a part-time assistant pastor at a United Methodist Church. “I am not mad at the church,” Barringer says. “However, I wish someone had advised me against taking on so much debt in order to be trained for ministry.”

Here is the reality: high debt and scarcity of full-time paying pastor positions.

The traditional mainline church track for full-time pastors followed like this: 4-years of college, 3-years of graduate seminary education, and ordination. This process launched a generation of pastors into their ministry in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. The traditional 90-credit seminary degree, the master of divinity, became the mark of an intellectual, professional, and full-time pastor. Churches had the people and money to support such a model. The pastor typical could raise a family and even buy a house (if one was not provided).

Now, because of cost of graduate education, seminary graduates are saddled with debt. In the $40,000 to $60,000 range (on top of college debt). The pace of the rise of the cost of education has exceeded the rate of inflation: to the tune of 500% since 1985. Usually, when a professional incurs such a debt, their boss gives them a raise because of their higher degree. Not the case with pastors. Many pastors have the same credit hours as school administrators, but paid much less.

With this current reality of shrinking churches, downsized church budgets, less full-time pastor positions, and need for a generation of clergy to lead churches into a new culture, a shorter more focused seminary degree is needed. An online distance modified 45-credit degree could shake up this bleak future for pastors and churches. Here’s what the 45-credit seminary degree could look like:

Leadership

5 Counterintuitive leadership habits

Leaders often struggle with questions of “Am I effective?” or “Why isn’t this working?” in the course of their leadership. Organizational leaders and pastors are often plagued with such questions because unlike their for-profit counterparts, non-profit leaders often work with very limited resources of people and money.

Forbes gives business leaders “5 Counterintuitive Habits Of Truly Authentic Leaders” that transfer easily to congregations. Maseena Zieglar writes:

We live in an era in which increasingly, leaders who are authentic, and who translate this into shared value for their people, whether shareholders or stakeholders, employees, customers or constituents, are the ones who have true and lasting impact – ultimately making the world a better place to live in. Striving for authenticity in leadership is the new kind of success to aspire to, and may well one day be the measure by which some aspects of performance are evaluated.

Zieglar states that the following five qualities are effective for authentic leaders:

Leadership

Beware of the Backfire Effect

“Daddy long-leg spiders are one of the most poisonous spiders but their fangs are too short to bite humans.” “All vaccines are deadly to all children.” You may heard those statements, but those statements are not true. Despite facts that disprove popular myths, some folks dig in further into their beliefs. That is called the Backfire Effect.

The term Backfire Effect was first used and documented by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler. They sought to study the interaction of people’s false benefits with counter credible evidence, which in turn further solidifies their misguided belief. Nyhan and Reifler tracked how corrections to false beliefs actually increase misconceptions among the group or person in question.

Often, the Backfire Effect is studied in the field of politics, but the Backfire Effect happens in the churches. Leadership in the local church need to be able to identify and respond to the Backfire Effect.

Churches experience the Backfire Effect when congregants assume facts or completely ignore the reality of a situation. In turn they label others as “wrong” or “right”. This in turn can create a culture of “us” versus “them”.

It is easy for church folk to assume nothing is happening in “this” committee or “that” ministry project is not moving in the right direction. This can enable that disgruntled congregant, who usually complains about everything, to slide further into their emotional hang-up concerning the church. When a leader sits down with the disgruntled congregant and calmly addresses their concerns with corrective facts, the Backfire Effect can occur: the disgruntled congregant rejects the facts and keeps believing that he/she is in the “right”.

Pastors and leaders need to understand where emotional opinions come from. There will always been those persons in the church who throw their hands up and say, “They don’t do evangelism” or “They don’t really care about people”. When in fact, those statements are not true. Such harsh comments usually come from some deep drama or past history that has not been addressed. People with anger management problems or prone to outbursts sometimes provide the worst Backfire Effect.

Still, churches must create spaces and times for people to express their concerns. It is important to not let the Backfire Effect dominate a meeting or discussion. It is best to give the facts, listen and move on. Later, a one-one meeting will be necessarily.

The more you communicate the reality or correct message to your organization or church audience the better. The more people who have the correct information the better. Spend time planning how to best communicate the truth: word of mouth, print, digital, or all of the above. Finally, frequent reminders of information is helpful. Such practices can help reduce the Backfire Effect.

blog, Good Friday, Holy Week

How to have a ‘good’ Good Friday

How can Good Friday be good? Good Friday is the day that Christians all around the world remember the suffering of Jesus Christ on a cross.

Depictions of Jesus Christ’s suffering are immortalized within our cultural framework because of such movies as The Passion of the Christ. However, we are not meant to wallow or suffer in the grief of Jesus with torment and pain.

On this day of sadness, we wonder: what is so good about this phrase Good Friday? There is no clear answer, but the word “good” and “God” were mixed together in the English speaking world. For instance, the surname “Goodspeed” derives from “Godspeed”, which comes from the expression “God speed (with you)” The expression, “good bye” came from the phase, “God be with ye (you).

Despite the origins of the phases, we don’t really feel “good” on Good Friday.

No matter what the origins of the phase, we cannot escape our feelings. Are we meant to feel guilty and depressed on Good Friday? We don’t feel “good” about Christ suffering. Are we meant to feel the pressure to be grateful of Jesus’ torment?

No! We must acknowledge our feelings of grief and loss regarding Jesus’ suffering on Good Friday. We cannot deny these feelings, nor should we. The stages of grief are real for us as they were for Jesus and his disciples:

blog, Christianity

Why it doesn’t matter if Noah film is inaccurate

Noah staring Russell Crowe has seen success at the box office with the general public but not everyone is happy about the film. Some claim that the Noah story was hijacked and is inaccurate.

True, there are parts of Noah that are inaccurate. These inaccuracies would be the things that Hollywood uses to make the story more entertaining, though these facts do not appear in the Bible. I’ll name a few without giving the movie away:

Noah is given snake-skin from the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Watchers, fallen angels play a role in Noah’s story
Methuselah, the oldest person in the Bible, appears in the Noah story
A ruler named Tubal-Cain is the antagonist
An army wages battle
Several ploys to kill characters in the story
Noah experiences recurring dreams

There are many more. If you remember your Bible story about Noah, you know that none of those things are found in the biblical account.

However, it does not matter. It does not matter if Hollywood added or took away facts from the biblical story of Noah. Heresy you say?

blog, Churches

Church gun giveaways send wrong message

A local church in Troy, NY is promoting a gun giveaway and its not the first church to do so. Churches in Texas and Kentucky have offered gun giveaways.

The practice of a church gun giveaway sends the wrong message. Is it wrong because it is illegal to own a gun? No. Is it wrong because it is immoral to own a gun? No.

The apostle Paul once wrote to the church in Corinth,

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.

It may be lawful for a church to have a AR-15 gun giveaway, but it is not profitable to Christianity. To some, having more guns means more safety. However, studies show no strong empirical evidence to support this. For instance, in the only peer review published study on gun related deaths, the Annals of Emergency Medicine reported:

“…on a case-controlled study in which household were matched on a number of demographic factors, and then incidences of gun violence were compared. They found that people who keep a gun in their home are almost twice as likely to die in a gun-related homicide.”

In 2004, American Journal of Epidemiology published a study that found:

social media

Twitter reveals top 100 Lenten sacrifices

In case you were still working on what you are giving up or for Lent, Christianity Today reports top 100 choices according to Twitter:

With about 5,000 tweets analyzed, the new hot topics so far this year are: “Netflix,” “Flappy Bird,” and “Getting an Oscar.” “Social Networking” is currently way out in front, with twice as many tweets as perennial favorites “Swearing” and “Alcohol.” (Last year, Social Networking came in at #4.)

Here is Stephen Smith of OpenBible.info’s running list of the top 100 most-mentioned Lenten sacrifices (both serious and cynical) in 2014, followed by top categories:

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