Notable Voices and the Week in Review: July 6, 2019

10 Responses from Fired Pastors – Rai... Pray for Nelson Street Missionary Bap...

Notable Voices and the Week in Review: July 6, 2019

From Around the Web:

Three Things to Be Careful About Saying at the Start of Your Service — Jared Wilson

Obviously context matters, and there’s no need to be dogmatic about how we informally (or even formally) begin a worship service, but here are some common introductory cliches I think worth weighing in terms of their helpfulness to the congregation’s worship.

How Many Protestant Churchgoers Actually Read the Bible Regularly? — Facts & Trends

Christians say the Bible is God’s Word, but even among Protestant churchgoers only a third spend time reading it every day. The 2019 Discipleship Pathway Assessment study from Nashville-based LifeWay Research found those who regularly attend Protestant churches are inconsistent in their reading and thinking about Scripture.

Your Church Is Not a Restaurant — Trevin Wax

In a consumer-oriented society, the default orientation for church attenders is to see their local congregation as a dispenser of religious goods and services. I say “default” not because it’s inevitable that everyone who goes to church perceives their congregation this way, but because without serious and sustained effort to have a more biblical approach people will naturally gravitate toward a view of the church that is influenced by a consumerist imagination.

Eight Faulty Assumptions of Non-Growing Churches — Chuck Lawless

Most churches are not growing. Not every non-growing church gives evidence of the following faulty assumptions; nevertheless, many do, and these assumptions help us to understand why the church isn’t growing. See if your church lives by (even unintentionally) any of these assumptions:

This Week at ThomRainer.com:

The Painful Reality of Church Shoppers

For those in church leadership, this pattern of members deciding to leave is far too common and almost always painful. Here are a few observations from both the Church Answers’ community and me…READ MORE

When Should Pastors Interrupt Vacations? Five Considerations

There are some emergencies that require pastors to interrupt a vacation. But too many pastors interrupt their vacations for almost any need in the church…READ MORE