articles

Danny Watterson asks “what’s the fastest way to wreck your church?” I can think of a ton of ways to do it: bad message content, miserable music, little to no connection opportunities, or a scandal. But one of the primary characteristics we see in churches that are not thriving is…

James Merritt spent years as senior pastor of an Atlanta-area megachurch that featured a mighty choir. Then he changed his tune. At 50, he left First Baptist Church Snellville to plant a new church—200 people in a rented space at a high school 12 miles away—focused on reaching a young…

A vicious circle is playing out across the religious landscape, to hear church musicians tell of it. Fewer young people are studying the organ, which has led some churches to remove the instrument for lack of practitioners. And without the physical presence of an organ to spark interest, even fewer…

Time to hire a single’s pastor? Most churches don’t have ministries for the now-largest demographic. Never before have there been more single adults in the United States than married ones, indicating that the times are changing. Tipping the scales at 50.2 percent, 124.6 million singles now form the majority of…

Photographer Christoph Morlinghaus takes us on a grand tour of the very best Modernist religious architecture in Form/Faith. From Eliel and Eero Saarinen’s Midwest churches to Marcel Breuer’s austere concrete to the far-out experiments of Pietro Belluschi, the series is a beautiful study of how religion has long spawned many…

In wake of the unbelief propagated by worship leaders and CCM artists like Michael Gungor, Vicky Beeching and Jars of Clay’s Dan Haseltine, it’s interesting to note that for the past several weeks, two top songs on PraiseCharts.com, often #1 and #2, are Hillsong’s This I Believe (The Creed) and…

Leadership Network and Vanderbloemen are releasing what they claim to be “by far the biggest-scale, cross-denominational response anyone has ever collected about church finances.” Specifically, they interviewed 727 megachurches about how they spend their finances, and the report has some interesting findings, all of which are free to download here.…

Phil Cooke says forget the concert and start inviting people to worship. The truth is, the vast majority of church “worship leaders” aren’t worship leaders at all. They’re simply musicians playing what are called “worship songs” from popular artists who write that sort of thing. The music is fine, and…

Good tips from Simon Roberts to promote powerful Scripture reading. So you thought your job was simply to read the Bible passage? That’s easy—you check you have the right passage, you look over it a couple of times and then you get up and read. Surely that’s all there is…

Logan Walter says his road ministry is an extension of his home ministry. My dad traveled in a worship band called Gabriel from the mid-70s to the early 90s. Actually, “traveled” is an understatement. Before I was born, my dad was on the road as many as 250 days per…

Chuck Lawless suggests bivocational ministers are often more connected to non-believers. “I didn’t come to seminary to be a bivocational minister, to have to get another kind of job,” my student told me. I may not have agreed with my student, but I did understand his thinking. Back then (almost…

‘Worship Wars’ Have Died Down But Some Christians Are Focused on ‘Coolness’ Instead of Genuine Ministry Fierce battles over whether classic hymns or contemporary tunes should be the linchpins of Christian worship may have subsided, but the arena is still messy, according to worship pastor and recording artist Lincoln Brewster.…