Church Life

“Why were evangelicals as lonesome as everyone else before COVID-19, but less so after?” - C.Today

“In the church, more is always more. More event participation equals more holiness. In church leadership, more events equals more impact. These are y = x, straight up diagonal graphs with no blips, no cap, no ceiling. There’s never an event planned called: ‘Stay home and be with your family and friends night.’ … The church assumes you’re doing that. Except we’re not doing that.” - Ref21

“So if disappointment is inevitable, how do we avoid the awful emotional turmoil that often follows when dealing with church people? One word: expectations.” - C.Leaders

“9. They are raising the bar of expectations. This move seems counterintuitive. If people are becoming less committed to the church, why not accommodate their low commitment?” - Thom Rainer

“Worship based on purpose, however, responds to a relationship that already exists internally. So, we respond not because of what our songs do to us, but instead, because of what Christ has already done in us.” - C.Leaders

“Seeing ourselves as the Body of Christ is not to demean personal experience, but a help to guard against allowing our focus to shift to ‘our’ personal experience rather than on who Christ is and what He as done.” - C.Leaders

“I had been prepped to be wary of family-dominated churches, of people whose people had been in the church for multiple generations. It was an unwritten rule that many generations in a church was probably not healthy, that those people would reflexively side against their ‘outsider’ pastor. Bah, humbug. Bad advice.” - SBCVoices

“…rebuke, which the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Book of Church Order explains, ‘… is a form of censure more severe than admonition. It consists in setting forth the serious character of the offense, reproving the offender, and exhorting him to repentance and to more perfect fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ.’” - Ref21

“Of course, most pastors and churches are sensible enough to avoid such ostentatious displays of weirdness. But we’ve got plenty of well-intentioned, respectable weirdness to go around.” - 9 Marks

“In 2015, the elders of Osterville Baptist Church adopted a church covenant that combined the biblical thoroughness of many historic covenants, but with the added warmth and eloquence of a wedding vow.” - 9 Marks