As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
Every organization is prone to forget why it’s there. People come and go, the founders pass away, the culture changes. Sometimes an organization can wake up and find it’s lost its way. Other times, the organization never wakes up.
The YMCA started in London in the 1840s as a Christian outreach to young men in the inner cities during the industrial revolution. Now, the YMCA is a gym with a robust after school youth program.
“…given some of these recent arguments against the PCA’s decision to declare the Nashville Statement to be biblically faithful, I thought it would be helpful to look at the clarity of the Westminster Standards, specifically as to what our standards have to say about sexual ethics and the ordering of sexual desires….While pastoral in nature, they are far more convicting and constricting than the Nashville Statement.” -
Leadership, especially in our Lord’s vineyard, is a challenging call. The same is true of Christian leaders who serve in society, secular work, government work, the military, etc. At first glance, leadership looks like it would be fun. You speak, people do things. The reality is much different. God-honoring leadership is servant-minded influence, empowered by the Holy Spirit, where the leader encourages those who serve with him toward the completion of a unified goal—a goal typically broken up into smaller strategic and then tactical objectives.
“We’ve all heard, and perhaps shared, these ‘staggering’ scary stats about pastors who leave the ministry every month. The truth is sometimes worse than myth, but fortunately not in this case.” - Facts & Trends
“Two-thirds of churches have an attendance under 125. The smaller church is the norm, not the exception. And though the news has not been that promising for smaller churches in recent years, I do see some very promising signs for the years ahead. Why do I make such an apparently contrarian statement? Here are five reasons.” - Thom Rainer
“The church is on the North Alabama Hallelujah Trail, a list of 32 churches that are at least a century old, still stand on their original sites, are accessible to the public and still hold services.” - BPNews
“In fact, this withholding is primarily expressed in Caucasian congregations whose perception is that their entitlement to control others with money is an expression of white privilege,” the California-Nevada Annual Conference said. - Christian Post
“The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada decided to use the tournament as a way to draw attention to the music that fills church sanctuaries every weekend. Its contest, where enthusiasts have voted since May on its website and on Facebook.” - RNS
“…many weeks what we mostly want is for worship to give us a good spiritual feeling. I suspect that by our inattention to what we’re singing. We sing various choruses that say, ‘Bring down your glory’ and ‘show us your face.’ But we do not know what we’re asking for. People in the Bible who actually encountered God’s glory fall on the ground in fear.” - Christianity Today
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