According to the New York Times, attending two churches is a growing trend. You can hardly call one girl going to two services a trend — but let’s say it’s more common than it once was. Church attendance in the United States has long been voluntary, if not market driven, but it’s usually been an exclusive relationship.  I get the sense that church/parishioner interaction is becoming transactional; membership is not a belonging, as much as a series of interactions — the visit to church gym, the church cafe, the church bookstore, the Sunday service.  In otherwords, it’s a pay-as-you-go system, not an ongoing relationship.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see ’suggested donations’ listed at the bottom of the church bulletin soon.  As churches focus on increasing the number of transactions, their ‘consumers’ feel less and less ongoing loyalty, and churches will try to make the cost for each program or ministry explicit.

November’s Harvard Business Review has a short article about the danger of ethical passivity — in short, many executives, when faced with knowledge of ethical lapses, think “that’s not my job.”

But whether we like it or not, the ethics of the leadership team should be everyone’s business. The problem is twofold: first, there is the embarassment when the lapse is discovered. But worse is the discovery that the leadership knew and did not act appropriately. A strong team must collectively accept responsibility for maintaining ethical standards. In a church, it’s even more important. Granted, there’s still a need for leadership — but ethics are the responsibility of the whole team, the music minister as much as the administrative pastor.

How can you overcome the inertia? From the beginning, make it clear that ethics are the responsibility of each team member. Make the control structure clear — what if there is a problem with the head pastor? It is to the pastor’s benefit to make it clear what should happen if the staff is concerned about the appearance of an ethical lapse. And it’s probably even better to have an system in place for anonymous reporting of concerns.

HT: Here4U at thetruthatfbcr.com

Michael F. Bird raises the question: was Jesus a carpenter? Michael suggests the Greek word is better rendered ‘mason’ or ‘builder,’ rather than ‘carpenter.’

With the advent of better search technology, scholars are able to identify the meaning of ancient words more accurately, based on contemporary usage. I’m not sure if Michael’s interpretation is based in computer research, but it does show that even today, we’ve still got a lot to learn about the original texts.

Whatever the rendering, it provides room for thought. Did Jesus know about yokes and plows because he built them? Or did He know more about rejected cornerstones than we usually think? Or was He building a multi-faceted temple to the glory of the Father as an extension of his profession?

Pleasantly surprised that the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe did so well last weekend? Disney was. They’ve greenlighted production on Prince Caspian, to be in theaters in December 2007!

A Black and Decker Executive has been sued over religious contributions. The article does not make it clear whether the contributions to the Mormon Temple in Washington, D.C. were from Black & Decker or from the executive, CEO Noland Archibald. “The suit claims Archibald benefited personally from the gifts because he is a member of the church, and the suit said the company didn’t contribute to the religious causes of other employees.”

It’s not clear what the shareholder hopes to accomplish. Traditionally, there has been very little limit on corporate charity; it is up to the company to decide what is ‘good for business,’ even when that means giving to rather narrow charities. The latter half of the quotation sounds more like a hostile work environment claim, but the suit isn’t being brought by an employee. So, it’s not clear where things are going, but this may be an interesting case to watch.

We finally saw the Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe tonight (putting off for another time the listing of our waterlogged possessions). It was a very good movie; a solid piece of work that will show there is a market for similar pieces of solid work with moral undertones. As others have noted, if the books were unknown, this would have been a home run. It is not The Lord of the Rings — but laying the two books side by side, you wouldn’t make that assumption, either. Narnia was, and always will be, a tale for children. Granted, it’s a much better tale than 99.9% of the tripe that gets passed off as educational or valuable today, and it does that job well. If you want more ‘adult’ Lewis, try ‘Till We Have Faces.

That said, it couldn’t help but beat the prior incarnations. It is a movie we’ll be glad to let our (future) children watch, after they’ve read the books.

I’m finally getting a chance to sit down to the sound of saws ripping interior wallboard. Last night, my wife and I pulled into the garage to find the waterpipe in our garage had split, about seven feet up the wall. A jet of water had bored through the wall board, through the insulation, and through the next layer of sheetrock.

Water was shooting from our garage through a 2″ hole, splattering against the far wall of our entryway. The storage area beneath the entry, and my ’study,’ was a good start on a freshwater aquarium. My wife and I began rushing around, trying to find the water shutoff valve; she finally ran to a neighbor, and we found it recessed in a dark corner.

Today, of course, has been a series of waits: waiting for the plumber, waiting for the adjuster, waiting for the cleanup crew. The plumber said a small adapter, left on the outside faucet, had caused the pipe to freeze, and then burst after we’d left for work yesterday.

Ugh.

Well, it’s time for a reminder:

If you’re looking for information concerning ‘Raytown,’ then you’ll want to follow the link down and to the left. Or: http://raytown.jonthebaptist.com

Note, there’s no “www” just “raytown.”

Also, COMMENTS are PUBLIC, e-mails are private.

And, as always, if you only know Raytown from Momma’s Family, you won’t be much interested…

I’m a little late to the discussion of John Hammet’s paper “An Ecclesiological Assessment of the Emerging Church.” Steve McCoy has linked to it, and his commenters have looked at it a dozen different ways.

Like a few others, I tripped over Hammet’s references to churches like Capitol Hill Baptist and Redeemer Presbyterian to show that it isn’t necessary for the church to adopt ‘postmodernism.’ I don’t disagree; to be stereotypically postmodern is to lose touch with absolute truth. But that doesn’t mean we can passively ignore the problems of modern church life.

Neither of the exemplar churches have much in common with common evangelical congregations. During my time in Washington, I had the privilege of attending CHBC, and I know several who have attended Redeemer. While neither flirts with postmodernism as much as Emergent (on the average, it’s a conversation not an institution, yadda, yadda) seems to, they do reject much of the distracting modern church culture.

Imagine that during the 1980s, GM had commissioned a paper on the emerging Japanese threat, and that the consultant returned with a study trumpeting that the Japanese were all wet, that ‘consumers do not always purchase Japanese cars; forward thinking buyers still want cars that emphasize tradition, quality, reliability, and expert engineering.” And then imagine that down in the footnotes, the consultant cites Jaguars, Porsches, and Mercedes as examples of those qualities. The disconnect is obvious: American car makers could hardly be satisfied that European carmakers were succeeding against smaller Asian imports. The point was for GM to know how it could return to healthy growth, not to identify enemies of enemies.

In the same way, Hammet’s paper seemingly justifies complacency, particularly if you aren’t familiar with CHBC or Redeemer. If you do know those churches, you can’t say they represent an extension of the contemporary church culture. Younger generations are demanding something different from the church than their parents did. There are different responses taking place, but there must be a response.