articles

Jon Nicol writes an open letter to senior pastors: Dear Senior Pastor, Before I start, I just want to say thanks for what you do week-after-week to bring us a message from the Word. Most of your congregation has no clue of the work–not to mention the emotional toll–that it…

Ed Stetzer: the motivation behind having different worship services is key. Having multiple services with different musical expressions has become the accepted norm for many churches. Signs and websites routinely advertise “contemporary, traditional and blended services.” Lask week, at the Momentum Conference in Ohio, I mixed it up a bit…

Worship services in evangelical churches do not mention sin, a major part of the Gospel message, Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, senior research fellow at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, said Monday at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Faith Angle Forum. “In very many evangelical and confessionally Reformed churches these…

Barna: 59% of Millennials who grew up in church have dropped out at some point. What, if anything, helps Americans grow in their faith? When Barna Group asked, people offered a variety of answers—prayer, family or friends, reading the Bible, having children—but church did not even crack the top-10 list.…

Geoff Surratt talks about one of his favorite worship leaders: The question seems to be, Should fat people lead worship? My answer would be yes and no. Let me tell a story and then explain. One of my favorite worship leaders was Sherren Wilson. Sherren was not only excessively overweight,…

Jamie Brown shares how he approaches serving as a guest worship leader for a church that isn’t his own. This coming Sunday I’ll have the privilege of filling in for a friend who’s the worship director at a local church. He’s on vacation and asked me to be the guest…

Jordan Stone explains one of the core values of his church. When I first began the journey of planting a church one common refrain of encouragement from seasoned planters was, “Identify your church’s core values. Communicate them clearly and often.” Now, this isn’t the place to quibble with whether or…

Rob Rash offers Easter planning ideas: There are many reasons why I love Easter. It’s a time of great joy, family get togethers, and celebration. Of course, it’s really all about Jesus! But it’s also about the church and about those who may come to hear this good news we…

Gary Miller: According to the Bible, there is a certain type of music God hates. But what is it? Can you picture God covering His ears because He hates what He hears? According to the Bible, there is a certain type of music God hates. But what is it? It…

America’s youth are leaving churches in droves. One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a 2012 Public Religion Research Institute poll, and 55 percent of those unaffiliated youth once had a religious identification when they were younger. Yet amidst this exodus, some church…

Bob Kauflin: if this is a trend in congregational song, the word “Whoa!” does come to mind. I’ve been thinking about the use of generic syllables in congregational singing for a while now. It’s not a new phenomenon. I remember singing, “Lai lai lai lai lai, lai lai lai lai…

Thom Rainer: Unhealthy churches have numbers of leaders who don’t practice 1 Corinthians 13. These persons tend to seek their picture of an ideal church rather than loving their current church, her leaders, and her members. They are thus constantly comparing some aspect of the church with some other church…

Chris Huff addresses common mix complaints. One sentence. One sentence should drive music mixing. Close your eyes and listen. What you SEE affects what you THINK you should HEAR. “I can’t hear the keyboard.” “I can’t hear the bass.” “I can’t hear my wife.” Ah, words spoken by the seeing.…

The Atlantic: Where is the line between a pastor promoting his own career and promoting the ministry of his church? By any measure, pastor Mark Driscoll is wildly successful in the contemporary evangelical world. Mars Hill Church, which he co-founded in 1996, in Seattle, now boasts 15 locations from Seattle…

A fascinating explanation of how Mars Hill pushed Driscoll’s book to the top of the NYT Best-Seller list. By tracking the Amazon sales rank of Real Marriage, we can actually see the effects of the bestseller listing. Using archives of Amazon’s Real Marriage page, I tracked the book’s overall Amazon…