Interesting. I came across this video today while doing research:
Youtube: Dateline: The power of faith
Again, it simply reinforces what we talked about on Sunday.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sunday update
Did you know we had 140 more people in Church on Sunday compared to one year ago?
We had a blast on Sunday talking about a humbling topic. Wow. I needed a nap after that one.
Some great stories from yesterday again. We had a visitor from out of state who came up to me with tears in his eyes to tell me how much the service meant to him. Cool!
Jamie Johnson is on vacation so Todd ran the entire service on Sunday in Richland Center. Way to go Todd!
I'm SO excited already about this series. Wait until you hear what we're talking about the next few weeks. By the way, the invite card titles are wrong...sorry about that. Once I got into the topics a little more, I just fell in love with one and decided to stretch it into a two week deal. I rarely ever do that, but it fit so perfectly for this week.
If you have a friend who's faith is struggling a little bit, don't let them miss this Sunday in Dodgeville (or the week after in RC). Trust me. You won't believe what you see. One of the videos being prepared is an amazing TRUE story.
We had a blast on Sunday talking about a humbling topic. Wow. I needed a nap after that one.
Some great stories from yesterday again. We had a visitor from out of state who came up to me with tears in his eyes to tell me how much the service meant to him. Cool!
Jamie Johnson is on vacation so Todd ran the entire service on Sunday in Richland Center. Way to go Todd!
I'm SO excited already about this series. Wait until you hear what we're talking about the next few weeks. By the way, the invite card titles are wrong...sorry about that. Once I got into the topics a little more, I just fell in love with one and decided to stretch it into a two week deal. I rarely ever do that, but it fit so perfectly for this week.
If you have a friend who's faith is struggling a little bit, don't let them miss this Sunday in Dodgeville (or the week after in RC). Trust me. You won't believe what you see. One of the videos being prepared is an amazing TRUE story.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Are Christians using their brains?
I to an email today that said this:
Christianity can withstand intellectual scrutiny. The problem is that most Christians cannot.
So said apologist Josh McDowell in a recent talk to a gathering of men's ministers. Over the past 17 years McDowell has asked over 4,000 pastors, leaders, and parents why they believe the Bible is true. The result? According to McDowell only six "came close to giving an intelligent answer."
Even worse, McDowell reports that many Christians suggest Christianity is true merely because they believe it. "That's voodoo thinking," McDowell says. "Where did we ever get that crazy idea that something is true just because we believe it?"
I can't stress how much I agree with this. Christians seem lazy intellectually today. Whenever we do a series on Sunday morning designed to help Christians answer the tough questions of life, our attendance falls. Nobody seems to care if they can answer the questions of life. Very strange.
For those of you who want to start, go google the websites of Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel. Watch some of the videos and start learning more about what you believe.
Christianity can withstand intellectual scrutiny. The problem is that most Christians cannot.
So said apologist Josh McDowell in a recent talk to a gathering of men's ministers. Over the past 17 years McDowell has asked over 4,000 pastors, leaders, and parents why they believe the Bible is true. The result? According to McDowell only six "came close to giving an intelligent answer."
Even worse, McDowell reports that many Christians suggest Christianity is true merely because they believe it. "That's voodoo thinking," McDowell says. "Where did we ever get that crazy idea that something is true just because we believe it?"
I can't stress how much I agree with this. Christians seem lazy intellectually today. Whenever we do a series on Sunday morning designed to help Christians answer the tough questions of life, our attendance falls. Nobody seems to care if they can answer the questions of life. Very strange.
For those of you who want to start, go google the websites of Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel. Watch some of the videos and start learning more about what you believe.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The most embarassing moment ever...
Ok...Have the children look away from the blog for a moment...
I read a book last weekend called "Transforming church in rural America." It had one of the funniest stories I've ever read.
A couple was into role-playing in...um...certain situations that are appropriate for husband and wife relationships. Nuff said. Anyway, the husband was dressed up like superman and was "flying" from the dresser to the bed to rescue his wife who was handcuffed to the headboard when he got knocked out cold by the ceiling fan. Out of reach of the phone, all the wife could do was yell for help from the neighbors, who called the fire department, who broke down the door and found them, well...yeah...you know how they found them.
There's a lesson there!
I read a book last weekend called "Transforming church in rural America." It had one of the funniest stories I've ever read.
A couple was into role-playing in...um...certain situations that are appropriate for husband and wife relationships. Nuff said. Anyway, the husband was dressed up like superman and was "flying" from the dresser to the bed to rescue his wife who was handcuffed to the headboard when he got knocked out cold by the ceiling fan. Out of reach of the phone, all the wife could do was yell for help from the neighbors, who called the fire department, who broke down the door and found them, well...yeah...you know how they found them.
There's a lesson there!
Friday, May 21, 2010
Pastor's down
Whoa. Look at these stats.
* 23 percent of all current pastors in the United States have been fired or forced to resign in the past.
* 45 percent of the pastors who were fired in one denomination left the ministry altogether.
* 34 percent of all pastors presently serve congregations that forced their previous pastor to resign.
* The average pastoral career lasts only fourteen years—less than half of what it was not long ago.
* 25 percent of the churches in one survey reported conflict in the previous five years that was serious enough to have a lasting impact on congregational life.
* 1,500 pastors leave their assignments every month in the United States because of conflict, burnout, or moral failure.
No wonder the church in America is dying. When the leadership is being destroyed this fast there is no way for the church to be healthy.
* 23 percent of all current pastors in the United States have been fired or forced to resign in the past.
* 45 percent of the pastors who were fired in one denomination left the ministry altogether.
* 34 percent of all pastors presently serve congregations that forced their previous pastor to resign.
* The average pastoral career lasts only fourteen years—less than half of what it was not long ago.
* 25 percent of the churches in one survey reported conflict in the previous five years that was serious enough to have a lasting impact on congregational life.
* 1,500 pastors leave their assignments every month in the United States because of conflict, burnout, or moral failure.
No wonder the church in America is dying. When the leadership is being destroyed this fast there is no way for the church to be healthy.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Atheism versus Religion - Part 2
Here's the other more interesting part of that article:
Vox Day notes concerning atheism and mass murder:
“ Apparently it was just an amazing coincidence that every Communist of historical note publicly declared his atheism … .there have been twenty-eight countries in world history that can be confirmed to have been ruled by regimes with avowed atheists at the helm … These twenty-eight historical regimes have been ruled by eighty-nine atheists, of whom more than half have engaged in democidal acts of the sort committed by Stalin and Mao …
The total body count for the ninety years between 1917 and 2007 is approximately 148 million dead at the bloody hands of fifty-two atheists, three times more than all the human beings killed by war, civil war, and individual crime in the entire twentieth century combined.
The historical record of collective atheism is thus 182,716 times worse on an annual basis than Christianity’s worst and most infamous misdeed, the Spanish Inquisition. It is not only Stalin and Mao who were so murderously inclined, they were merely the worst of the whole Hell-bound lot. For every Pol Pot whose infamous name is still spoken with horror today, there was a Mengistu, a Bierut, and a Choibalsan, godless men whose names are now forgotten everywhere but in the lands they once ruled with a red hand.
Is a 58 percent chance that an atheist leader will murder a noticeable percentage of the population over which he rules sufficient evidence that atheism does, in fact, provide a systematic influence to do bad things? If that is not deemed to be conclusive, how about the fact that the average atheist crime against humanity is 18.3 million percent worse than the very worst depredation committed by Christians, even though atheists have had less than one-twentieth the number of opportunities with which to commit them. If one considers the statistically significant size of the historical atheist set and contrasts it with the fact that not one in a thousand religious leaders have committed similarly large-scale atrocities, it is impossible to conclude otherwise, even if we do not yet understand exactly why this should be the case. Once might be an accident, even twice could be coincidence, but fifty-two incidents in ninety years reeks of causation![10]
Again, read for yourself here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_Mass_Murder
Vox Day notes concerning atheism and mass murder:
“ Apparently it was just an amazing coincidence that every Communist of historical note publicly declared his atheism … .there have been twenty-eight countries in world history that can be confirmed to have been ruled by regimes with avowed atheists at the helm … These twenty-eight historical regimes have been ruled by eighty-nine atheists, of whom more than half have engaged in democidal acts of the sort committed by Stalin and Mao …
The total body count for the ninety years between 1917 and 2007 is approximately 148 million dead at the bloody hands of fifty-two atheists, three times more than all the human beings killed by war, civil war, and individual crime in the entire twentieth century combined.
The historical record of collective atheism is thus 182,716 times worse on an annual basis than Christianity’s worst and most infamous misdeed, the Spanish Inquisition. It is not only Stalin and Mao who were so murderously inclined, they were merely the worst of the whole Hell-bound lot. For every Pol Pot whose infamous name is still spoken with horror today, there was a Mengistu, a Bierut, and a Choibalsan, godless men whose names are now forgotten everywhere but in the lands they once ruled with a red hand.
Is a 58 percent chance that an atheist leader will murder a noticeable percentage of the population over which he rules sufficient evidence that atheism does, in fact, provide a systematic influence to do bad things? If that is not deemed to be conclusive, how about the fact that the average atheist crime against humanity is 18.3 million percent worse than the very worst depredation committed by Christians, even though atheists have had less than one-twentieth the number of opportunities with which to commit them. If one considers the statistically significant size of the historical atheist set and contrasts it with the fact that not one in a thousand religious leaders have committed similarly large-scale atrocities, it is impossible to conclude otherwise, even if we do not yet understand exactly why this should be the case. Once might be an accident, even twice could be coincidence, but fifty-two incidents in ninety years reeks of causation![10]
Again, read for yourself here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_Mass_Murder
Atheism versus Religion - Part 1
I read this online today...very interesting:
Concerning atheism and mass murder, Christian apologist Gregory Koukl wrote that "the assertion is that religion has caused most of the killing and bloodshed in the world. There are people who make accusations and assertions that are empirically false. This is one of them."[1] Koukl details the number of people killed in various events involving theism and compares them to the much higher tens of millions of people killed under communist atheistic regimes.[1] It has been estimated that in less than the past 100 years, governments under the banner of communism have caused the death of somewhere between 40,472,000 to 259,432,000 human lives.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term democide (death by government). Dr. R. J. Rummel's mid estimate regarding the loss of life due to communism is that communism caused the death of approximately 110,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987.[8]
Koukl summarized by stating:
“ It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the detail it produces evil because the individual people are actually living in a rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it can produce it, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of God.[1]
To read the whole thing and check the footnotes, go here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_Mass_Murder
Concerning atheism and mass murder, Christian apologist Gregory Koukl wrote that "the assertion is that religion has caused most of the killing and bloodshed in the world. There are people who make accusations and assertions that are empirically false. This is one of them."[1] Koukl details the number of people killed in various events involving theism and compares them to the much higher tens of millions of people killed under communist atheistic regimes.[1] It has been estimated that in less than the past 100 years, governments under the banner of communism have caused the death of somewhere between 40,472,000 to 259,432,000 human lives.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term democide (death by government). Dr. R. J. Rummel's mid estimate regarding the loss of life due to communism is that communism caused the death of approximately 110,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987.[8]
Koukl summarized by stating:
“ It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the detail it produces evil because the individual people are actually living in a rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it can produce it, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of God.[1]
To read the whole thing and check the footnotes, go here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_Mass_Murder
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Another Pastor quits
I heard about another Pastor who quit recently. It's a very common thing. Lots of Pastors quit every year. Usually the reasons are always the same:
-Ridiculous expectations
-Low pay
-Little support/encouragement
-Constant conflict
-Church politics
-An impossible schedule
-Rising demands of members (all demanding different things)
-The pain of leadership
...and on and on the list goes. However, what I was told about this one that left was a little more humorous. Here's the quote I was given:
"I'm a fisher of men and they wanted me to be the keeper of the aquarium."
Too funny! I can't say I've heard that one too often, but I sure know how he feels. In my first Church, it was all about "Let's just keep things as they are" despite the fact that they were going under. They didn't care about that and didn't want to change anything. So they didn't and now they no longer exist. I'm always amazed how many churches will cling to their traditions right to the grave.
Brian
-Ridiculous expectations
-Low pay
-Little support/encouragement
-Constant conflict
-Church politics
-An impossible schedule
-Rising demands of members (all demanding different things)
-The pain of leadership
...and on and on the list goes. However, what I was told about this one that left was a little more humorous. Here's the quote I was given:
"I'm a fisher of men and they wanted me to be the keeper of the aquarium."
Too funny! I can't say I've heard that one too often, but I sure know how he feels. In my first Church, it was all about "Let's just keep things as they are" despite the fact that they were going under. They didn't care about that and didn't want to change anything. So they didn't and now they no longer exist. I'm always amazed how many churches will cling to their traditions right to the grave.
Brian
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Fail fast and fail cheap
In an earlier blog, I talked about how much I LOVE this saying. I found it in an article we were reading and discussing at staff recently and since then, I have been unable to get it out of my mind. Now I think I know why.
Many of you know that I do monthly mentoring phone calls. I find churches that are healthier than HVCC and I write the Pastor and ask permission to interview them by phone. Some say yes and some say no. Last week, I struck gold. I had a 90 minute interview with a guy doing rural, multi-site. I learned so much I came out of that interview bouncing off the walls with excitement! He showed us how to "fail fast and fail cheap" in our multi-site experiment. It has led to MANY hours of discussion already among the staff and leaders as we process what we learned and make plans to implement it. It's highly possible we could have five sites in the next year. Of course, it's also possible we could only have the two we currently have.
I'll continue to give you more details as the plan unfolds, but it's pretty exciting right now. The possibility of reaching out to even more people far from God has me completely jazzed! What if we were able to reach 1000 people in SW WI with the good news of Jesus? Amazing.
On a side note, is there someone you need to call for your own mentoring interview? Someone who could help you learn a key piece that would improve your marriage, parenting relationships, business, ministry or life? Take the risk! Most of the time, people are flattered to be asked.
Many of you know that I do monthly mentoring phone calls. I find churches that are healthier than HVCC and I write the Pastor and ask permission to interview them by phone. Some say yes and some say no. Last week, I struck gold. I had a 90 minute interview with a guy doing rural, multi-site. I learned so much I came out of that interview bouncing off the walls with excitement! He showed us how to "fail fast and fail cheap" in our multi-site experiment. It has led to MANY hours of discussion already among the staff and leaders as we process what we learned and make plans to implement it. It's highly possible we could have five sites in the next year. Of course, it's also possible we could only have the two we currently have.
I'll continue to give you more details as the plan unfolds, but it's pretty exciting right now. The possibility of reaching out to even more people far from God has me completely jazzed! What if we were able to reach 1000 people in SW WI with the good news of Jesus? Amazing.
On a side note, is there someone you need to call for your own mentoring interview? Someone who could help you learn a key piece that would improve your marriage, parenting relationships, business, ministry or life? Take the risk! Most of the time, people are flattered to be asked.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday update
Another amazing day at Hidden Valley for so many reasons.
*We broke 700+ again in combined attendance.
*We're now averaging over 500 every week at Dodgeville.
*I spoke with a woman who's son was a satanist, but now is attending Hidden Valley and LIKES IT!
*The band knocked it out of the park with their version of Revelation Song.
*We made some new updates to the stage and camera to improve the quality of what we're sending to HVCC-RC.
*We had TONS of kids on stage during both services singing to the mom's and they stole the show.
Way to go everyone! Thanks for all the hard work you put in each week.
Brian
*We broke 700+ again in combined attendance.
*We're now averaging over 500 every week at Dodgeville.
*I spoke with a woman who's son was a satanist, but now is attending Hidden Valley and LIKES IT!
*The band knocked it out of the park with their version of Revelation Song.
*We made some new updates to the stage and camera to improve the quality of what we're sending to HVCC-RC.
*We had TONS of kids on stage during both services singing to the mom's and they stole the show.
Way to go everyone! Thanks for all the hard work you put in each week.
Brian
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
