Putting up Barriers to Ministry

I empathize with Alan Knox’s post today, Help or Get Out of the Way. He relates two experiences of church leadership standing in the way because they required people to go through existing church programs. This is not the way to go about Christian ministry. Come to think of it, it’s not even the [...]

Greetings from the Religious Arm of Socialism

In a blog post My Dream: No More Methodist Church, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation fame says that his dream is that there be no more Methodist church.  What set him off was a church sign (on a Methodist church, of course) urging passage of the DREAM act. He says that the church [...]

Wesleyan-Arminian vs Calvinist Self-Identification

I found this interesting article at Baptist Press via the Methoblog’s Twitter feed. The article discusses an apparent divide between the Southern Baptist Convention and other denominations on how many pastors, particularly young pastors, are identifying themselves as Calvinists. One interesting note is that while identification as Calvinist outside the SBC is not increasing, [...]

UMC Rather than SDA – Again

This was brought to my attention when I read the text of Ted Wilson’s address to the SDA General Conference. (I listened to he first 10 minutes as well, but preferred reading.) Why am I interested in the sermon presented by the new president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists? I am, after [...]

Looking for a UMC Pastor in the West or Northwest

My wife Jody is looking for a pastor in the west or northwest to answer about 5 questions regarding ministry in the UMC, with the interview to be published in the Bible Study Paths WebZine. She’s looking for someone who is currently pastoring a church. Your interview responses will be published in September alongside [...]

Christian Perfection – Not So Plain to Me!

One of my early experiences teaching in a United Methodist Church involved giving a series on the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection. That may seem surprising for a new member of a United Methodist congregation, but my background in the Seventh-day Adventist Church involved a good deal of Wesleyan talk (though not the doctrine [...]

Orbiting the Hairball

United Methodist district superintendent (Grand Rapids District) Laurie Haller takes a cue from a book on surviving in a corporate environment to make some suggestions for United Methodist leadership in her post Orbiting the UMC Hairball 4-12-10.

Amongst other things she notes:

The whispered truth is that The United Methodist Church suppresses creativity [...]

Quote of the Day

From the Wesley Report:

Mainline Protestant Christianity has become known for leaving people in slavery, because somewhere along the way, our strategy changed from leading people out of Egypt to planting churches along the Nile. And that’s why mainline denominations continue to lose members. People don’t need churches to help them stay in [...]

How About Planting a Church?

That’s what Allan Bevere suggests as the ordination process, based on his experience in Cuba.

I find the idea attractive, at least for certain types of ministry. There might be other ways to test various gifts. It does relate to a problem I’ve noted amongst United Methodist ministers, many of whom come out of [...]

What Would a Successful UMC Look Like?

Ex-UMC, now megachurch pastor Craig Groeschel offers six suggestions for the United Methodist Church, packaged in six brief blog posts. I think that there is much worth considering in his suggestions, though I don’t think they are generally all that new.

There’s something that bothers me in the whole discussion, however. In practically every [...]