Leadership
Baptist Church Membership
Baptist Church MembershipMay 11, 2009 The genius of a Baptist approach to ecclesiology is that context and experience are permitted a legitimate role in shaping our theology and practice of church. The danger of such an approach is that by focussing on context and experience we lose the capacity to understand them theologically. When that […]
Church attendance
In the basement of Shenandoah University’s Goodson Chapel one chilly November Sunday morning, John Copenhaver, a tall, white-haired professor of philosophy and religion, folded at the waist to demonstrate how to bow like a monk. The eight students clustered around him watched closely. One, taking stock of the incredulous faces around him, volunteered the group’s […]
A Thought for Preachers (and others)
I’ve just posted this as a Facebook thought (it was brought to memory by a quote in Geoff Pound’s Discernment devotions, Making Life Decisions). In my opinion, John Claypool is/was (he died a year or two ago) the best preaching writer or writing preacher in the English language in the 20th century. (His verbal delivery […]
Why Go To Church?
A Church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. “I’ve gone for 30 years now,” he wrote, “and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons. But for the life of me, I can’t remember a single […]
Abreaction
I’m sometimes asked whether a client should relive a painful/abusive event in order to be healed from its effects. My response is mostly: only if the client feels the need to do it, and if other indications are that the event is not a figment of their imagination, or that retelling the event/s repeatedly is […]
Seminarians
Sightings 5/18/09 — Martin E. Marty Having had enough of headlines and cable television about distracting commencement events, I am planning to do a small, quiet commencement one the day before you read this. It’s at a favorite school of our tribe, Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, a school and a state (I lived in […]
Marriage counselling
A pastor asked about counselling couples for/after marriage: I replied: My favourite place for counselling couples – before or after marriage – is a smorgasbord restaurant (‘FoodStar’ at Burwood Highway Knox – cheap and good). I listen to both, then may talk to one of the couple while the other gets some food (‘take your […]
Obituary: The Emerging Church
Obituary: The Emerging Church (1994-2009) ~ C Michael Patton ~ For those of you who want to criticize the tone of this post, please make sure you read my previous posts on the emerging church. [See http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2008/08/will-the-real-emerger- please-stand-up/] Take this post in the spirit is was intended and lighten up. Today, at 12:33pm, while most […]
Tribes: we need you to lead us
Seth Godin, Tribes: we need you to lead us (New York: Portfolio, 2008) It is in our nature to gather in tribes. Seth Godin describes a tribe as a group of people connected to one another, a leader and an idea. Implied by this definition is that tribes have a shared interest and a means […]
Churches and Pastors
I understand churches as being called to be an alternative society, a “new society in the shell of the old” as Peter Maurin used to put it. This means (in part) a redistributive economy where whoever needs it in order to fulfill their calling (whatever that calling might be) has the money shared with them. […]
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