Tuesday’s Catch: ‘Mistakes More Likely To Be Made By SMALL Churches Than BIG Churches’ And More
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| St. John’s Anglican, Stuarttown, Ontario (Closed ) |
Mistakes More Likely To Be Made By SMALL Churches Than BIG Churches
Small churches are not just smaller versions of big churches.
Every size has value, but different sizes serve different functions in the body of Christ. They also have different challenges and they tend to make different kinds of mistakes.
Here are 5 mistakes that are more likely to be made by small churches than by big ones. The smaller, the more susceptible they are.
Churches must do more to equip Christians for evangelism, says J John
Churches need to devote more time and resources to evangelism and do more to equip their members to share their faith with non-Christians, evangelist Canon J John has said.
Speaking at the Church Resources Exhibition (CRE), the founder of the Philo Trust warned that many churches are devoting the overwhelming majority of their time and resources to worship and the wellbeing of existing congregations, while neglecting evangelism.
Churchwide Plan Targets Evangelism, Diocesan Support
Evangelism, supporting dioceses, and building a church built to last are the highlights of a strategic plan Executive Council adopted on October 19. The governing body, which functions as the board of directors of the Episcopal Church, gathered at the Church Center in Manhattan for its fall meeting.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe told Executive Council that the priorities laid out in “Our Courageous Witness,” developed during the council’s retreat in Puerto Rico over the summer, will “reorient our work as a churchwide body.” Rowe unveiled its priorities — witness, support, and sustain — and shared, in broad strokes, how they would be carried out.
The Executive Council may have developed and adopted a strategic plan but getting Episcopal dioceses, clergy, and laity on board may prove far more than daunting. For over three decades Episcopal clergy have been cultivating a culture in Episcopal churches antagonistic to evangelism. It was evident during the Decade of Evangelism in the 1990s and during the church planting initiative of the late Charles Jenkins, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana in the opening years of this century. It is a major factor that has contributed to the decline of the Episcopal Church. Posting “All are welcome. No exceptions” signs has not proven an effective means of outreach.
Legal Challenge to Project Spire Announced
A parish priest and a churchwarden have sought permission from the Charity Commission to launch a legal challenge to Project Spire, the Church of England’s plan to set up a £100 million fund as reparations for the church’s complicity in the transatlantic slave trade.
Bijan Omrani, a popular historian and churchwarden at St. Michael’s, Shute, in Devon, announced October 13 on X that he and the Rev. Jamie Franklin, the traditionalist Anglo-Catholic rector of Holy Trinity, Winchester, had sent the letter to the commission opposing the plan. Members of the church’s General Synod had been apprised of the likelihood of such a challenge at their meetings last July.
Civil rights groups sued to stop DHS voter intimidation
Civil rights and voting rights organizations have sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stop its “secretive and unlawful effort” to gather and use sensitive voter information to help sabotage next month’s midterm elections.
“DHS claims that it needs this information to identify voter fraud. But DHS has no authority to stockpile voter data for a nationwide election-law dragnet, and in carrying out this policy it has disregarded federal safeguards and violated the privacy rights of millions of Americans,” the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and League of United Latin American Citizens charged in the action filed Oct. 15 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Plaintiffs in the complaint are represented by Democracy Forward and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
An ‘empathy gap’ divides Americans ahead of the midterms, says PRRI report
A survey released Tuesday (Oct. 20) found that Republicans and evangelicals increasingly see empathy as a danger that can lead society away from God. The survey found that more than half of Americans see President Trump as a threat to democracy.
3 Reasons Christians Should Care About the Rule of Law
It’s common in our cultural moment to hear that “the rule of law is under attack.” Depending on your algorithm, the attackers come from different corners of the political-ideological spectrum.
In my legal practice, the rule of law seems to function. But headlines and anecdotes regularly cause me to wonder if its days are numbered. Media broadcasts daily claim that the rule of law is buckling, and international headlines regularly offer almost dystopian previews of what its total collapse might portend.
What the Respect for Marriage Act Means for Churches: Religious Liberty Protections Explained
The Respect for Marriage Act (RMA), passed into law in 2022, preserves important religious-liberty rights while requiring federal and state recognition of certain legally valid marriages.
Questions still occasionally circulate about protections churches receive under the Act. Here is what church leaders need to know.
The inspiring story of St Luke: the man who wrote a quarter of the New Testament
18 October is St Luke’s Day. This year’s observance has particular significance, marking the 500th anniversary of the first printed publication of Luke’s Gospel in English. This is the story….
5 Points of Possible Theological Confusion Among Your Churchgoers
Frequent confusion over these five theological questions reveals a lack of understanding of how Scripture addresses them.
A Guide to Praying the Daily Offices
In this article I offer a basic guide to praying the Daily Offices. The four offices with which Anglicans and Episcopalians in North America will be most familiar are the services of Morning and Evening Prayer, the service of Noon Day Prayer, and the service of Compline, or Prayer at the End of the Day. Some may be familiar with the Lucenary, or Lamp-Lighting Service, called the Order for Worship in the Evening in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer; others may be familiar with the Litany, or General Intercession, used as a separate service.
For a growing number of Anglican and Episcopal congregations the Sunday service is Morning Prayer due to a shortage of priests and other factors. In future articles I will be looking at how celebrating Morning Prayer as the principal service on Sunday differs from celebrating Morning Prayer as a daily service on a weekday. I will also be looking at an alternative to Morning Prayer as the principal service on Sunday found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and other more recent Prayer Books–the Service of the Word.
What Should I Do with My Doubts? 3 Suggestions
When someone has doubts in the Christian life, one of the things I remind them of is that it’s a very normal thing to have doubts. Christians have had doubts for generations. The Bible’s filled with people who doubted. Some of the most famous Christians we know of had serious moments of doubt. Martin Luther was famous for his doubting. Spurgeon had moments of crises of faith. The real question, though, is, What do you do when you have those doubts? What steps should a Christian take?
There are a number of steps that a Christian should take. The first thing to do when you have doubt is to recognize that you should not go it alone. When believers are doubting, they may be tempted to isolate themselves, like a wounded animal, and go off in the corner and be by yourself.