http://jonthebaptist.com Rethinking church, from the ground up. Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:06:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en FYI: the hipsters are already hating on your church of the future. I spent far too much time laughing at http://www.stuffchristianculturelikes.com/ and http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/ this week. But only after the sting wore off.   Jumbotrons?  Leading worship barefoot? Coffeehouses? Bono?   That stuff signaled a quality church in 1999, when I was in college. And ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=165 Do congregations make good decisions?   Rick Warren says, no, we've just imposed American democracy on church: "what do the words committees, elections, majority rule, boards, board members, parliamentary procedures, voting, and vote have in common?  None of these words are found in the New Testament! We have imposed an American ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=163 Toward a Great Commission Resurgence identifies six "distinctives" of Baptist churches :  regenerate church membership, believer’s baptism by immersion, the priesthood of all believers, congregational church polity, local church autonomy, and liberty of conscience. One of these, I note, is almost never debated in Convention life.   "Your church membership is unregenerate" ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=162 I just finished the 2nd of 3 annual conventions as a member of the  Southern Baptist Convention's Committee on Order of Business.  The Committee is charged with setting a schedule for the Convention, and handling motions made by the Messengers.  Unpacking the whole convention will take weeks or years, but ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=161 The Wall Street Journal has this interesting article about church "franchises," based on "brand" models -- the pastor is at one location, and appears at the franchises through DVD or video-link.    The focus of the article is Flamingo Road Church, in Florida (f/k/a Flamingo Road Baptist Church), "loosely affiliated with ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=160 A new study finds that $40 billion is being stolen from charities each year, on the order of 13%. Most likely culprit? "A female employee with no criminal record who earned less than $50,000 a year." On average, she steals less than $40,ooo. The most costly embezzler? Male executives ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=158 Caelan Cross, son of SBC-blogger Alan Cross, will be having a lymph biopsy this week. Please pray that it is not a return of cancer. More here. Update: Cancer free!  Hallelujah! http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=155 Just what Baptists have always suspected:  dancing in the church causes big problems.  Like radical Islam.     From Mark Steyn, in the Wall Street Journal. A few decades back, a young middle-class Egyptian spending some time in the U.S. had the misfortune to be invited to a dance one weekend and ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=154 I'm used to a fair amount of e-mail paranoia. The next great computer virus is coming. Madeline Murray O'Hare is back from the dead. Proctor and Gamble's got a satanist logo. But then I go to Snopes.com, and it's always wrong, wrong, wrong. So, ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=153 An interesting trend: people are demanding more transparency from those they do business with. http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/transparency.htm "Leave it to an ever growing number of whistleblower sites, leaked emails, activist portals and disgruntled consumers to name and shame corporations for stupid, unlawful, unclean, greedy, unethical, despicable behavior." The rising generation expect more ... http://jonthebaptist.com/?p=149