Article
Pluralism is one of the great new buzz words in talk about the church. Our understanding of pluralism, however, tends to be long on sociology and short on theology. We lack the theological imagery to enable us to reflect on life in a pluralistic church. Two biblical images of community hold promise for helping us …
Continue reading “A Pluralistic Church: Collapsing Tower or Growing Vine”
Article
The Westport neighborhood of midtown Kansas City, Missouri, is a mix of avant-garde youth and aging hippies. If bumper stickers are any indication, political views range from the muscular left ("Veterans for Kerry") to the forthrightly left ("Peace is patriotic") to the crudely left ("Dump the son of a Hush?"). The first man I passed …
Book Chapter
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use copyright material in this book. Apologies are offered for any oversight in this matter and full acknowledgement will gladly be made in future editions. Gratitude is expressed for permission to quote the following: George Appleton’s prayer ‘O Lord, let the Church…’ to his daughter Rachel …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) Professor Hall ‘thinks the faith’ from within the North American cultural and ecclesial context. His theological work is not a timeless abstraction, but a rigorous attempt to engage Christian faith with social and historical actuality so that the gospel may be more faithfully proclaimed and lived.
Article
“The early Christians were not people of standing, but they had a secret power among them, and the secret power resulted from the way in which they were members of one another.” — Elton Trueblood I’ve performed more wedding ceremonies than I can count, but there is one wedding that I will …
Article
BOOK REVIEW: The Crisis in the Church: Spiritual Malaise and Fiscal Woe. By Robert Wuthnow. Offord University Press, 291 pp., $30.00. In this his most prophetic book, Robert Wuthnow grieves for the lack of economic and stewardship visions in the contemporaiy church and for its antecedent failure of spirit. He places much of the responsibility …
Continue reading “Cash and Character: Talking About Money in the Church”
Book Chapter
At least in many parts of Christendom the quest for meaning, the revival of historic religious convictions about man’s nature and destiny, about his lostness and his salvation, and the need to realize the significance of these convictions in relation to contemporary world and life views, have led to a renewal of the theological endeavor. The role of the seminary is here weighed in several relationships.
Book Chapter
Throughout the centuries, famous and unknown Christians have longed for the presence of God and found it in Jesus Christ. The author presents a number of examples from both the past and the present.
Book Chapter
Americans tend to uncritically identify loyalty to family with loyalty to church. Congregations in which loyalty to church and family are virtually synonymous are engaged in an American form of religious familism.
Book Chapter
This chapter is about the way “the family pew” ethos affects program planning and leadership roles in congregations. If family loyalty controls the events that matter most in the life of a congregation, the faith commitments of that congregation are misplaced. If love of family is stronger and deeper than love for Jesus Christ, this is family idolatry.
Book Chapter
The seminary’s express purpose is to educate those who will direct the affairs of church institutions, especially local churches. They tend in consequence to neglect the first function of a theological school—the exercise of the intellectual love of God and neighbor. To this imbalance we shall need to address ourselves in other connections. The definition of the minister in the modern community is faced as well as the authority of the minister and his director.
Book Chapter
Jesus Christ means many things: the historical Jesus, the person of Jesus, the Jesus of faith, the living presence of Jesus. The author attempts to explain what the historical Jesus of Nazareth was like.
Book Chapter
The author discusses numerous ways Christian see Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God and how the early followers and the early church developed the concepts of Jesus’ Divinity.?
Book Chapter
The focus on ministry as spiritual direction requires the pastor to become the servant of all, the person who enables the ministry of every other member of the congregation. To accomplish this objective would require a redistribution of work in most congregations. In that process, both pastor and congregation will find that their understanding of the nature and mission of the church is changing.
Book Chapter
Very much as local pluralistic churches and harried ministers, seminaries also have an uncertainty of purpose. The first, superficial impression is not erased by more thorough acquaintance with theological schools; many instances of self-satisfied provincialism, inert traditionalism and specious modernization tend to confirm it. But more intimate acquaintance also brings into view a second, very different aspect of the scene. Alongside conventionality, which is sometimes downright antiquarian, one encounters vitality, freshness, eagerness and devotedness among these teachers and students.
Book Chapter
The habit of associating biblical concepts like the Providence of God and the election of Israel with a nation and Protestant Christianity has greatly influenced the way American Protestants regard the nations of the world, the church, their families, and themselves.
Book Chapter
For many Christians it is an experience of Jesus Christ that makes belief in God real. The author looks at the numerous concepts of the meaning of "God" in history.
Book Chapter
The belief in the past was that there was only one truth, but today there is a bewildering variety, yet a continuity. In this chapter Marcus Braybrooke looks at the multitudes of ways that religion is defined and practiced.
Book Chapter
Where the longing for God is satisfied, human sexuality is enriched because spiritual discipline gives form and direction to desire. The mystery of sexual union is heightened for partners who love each other in Christ.” Conversely, exaggerated or compulsive love of any kind is a sign of alienation from God, of a lack of spiritual direction.
Book Chapter
The author looks at the multitude of reformers especially in the sixteenth century and continuing to the present, and how the church has been scattered through these influences.
Book Chapter
The inability of many congregations to address the life experience of the post-sixties generation realistically could be one of the reasons that so many young adults who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s are not found in “the family pew.” Parents who were reared to believe that the values of “the family pew” are the only option for Christians are confused when they discover that their children do not conform to those ethical values.
Book Chapter
The devotional life of a Christian — prayer, devotions, fellowship, Eucharist. In this chapter, the author looks at the ways in which the disciple comes closer to his or her Lord.
Book Chapter
The Protestant ideal of family is inadequate when dealing with life in a changing culture and can mislead the thinking of pastors about Christian spirituality.
Book Chapter
How does faith in Jesus affects the way a disciple lives? How does he meet human need? He attempts to change the structures of society.
Book Chapter
Good relationships with parents, children, siblings, or life partners are of great importance to most church members. Yet, many congregations, these issues are treated as private or peripheral to the life of faith. As the designated leader of a congregation, the pastor is expected to interpret the meaning of the Christian life. That means that the pastor can influence the way the people of God think about the church, ministry, their families, and all of life.
Book Chapter
The focus of this chapter is a positive look into the future despite the predictions of doom. There are signs of a new dawn as people of faith are renewed in their spiritual life and engage more actively with the problems and suffering of the world.
Book Chapter
The church today is in no position to condemn the evils of “the world” unless members can do so with spiritual integrity. If the dream, identities, and behaviors of church members are not distinguishable from the American Dream of togetherness, successful careers, and upward mobility, the church in the United States can hardly offer justice to victims of cultural oppression. If congregations continue to reflect the racial and sexual prejudices of American culture in the way they define membership, authority, and power, the church will have very little credibility as a prophetic voice in God’s world.
Article
Book Reviews: A Field Guide to U.S. Congregations: Who’s Going Where and Why. By Cynthia Woolever and Deborah Bruce. Westminster John Knox, 96 pp., paperback, Bridging Divided Worlds: Generational Cultures in Congregations. By Jackson W Carroll and Wade Clark Roof Jossey-B ass, 268 pp. Congregations in Transition: A Guide for Analyzing, Assessing and Adapting in …
Continue reading “Church Market: Investing in Congregations”
Article
I picture the process of change in my theological thinking in both archaeological and architectural terms: I have dug down into earlier layers of experience, and built on what went before. In my childhood and youth, I encountered cultural and religious groups other than my own; later I would engage them theologically, in reverse order. …
Continue reading “Confession and Community: An Israel-like View of the Church”
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) By analyzing attitudes about church and family and by illustrating how our “biblical values” are often too closely related to the “American Dream,” Fishburn offers sharp insights into the changes currently underway in our culture, churches, and families. Fishburn proposes a new agenda for the church — an agenda that can create a healthy context for traditional and non-traditional families.
Article
I’m going to tell you a little about myself by way of introduction and how I happened to get into the work that I do – of working primarily with congregations and occasionally with other religious organizations around issues of human differences. For about 15 years, I was the rector of a church in Washington, …
Article
It is a bit ironic that increased attention is being paid to the biblical theme of covenant just at a time when biblical scholarship is moving on to other constructs for interpretation. Clearly, “covenant” is not the single overarching theme of the Bible as previously claimed. Nonetheless, it has important potential for the church in …
Article
Jim Kelley and I asked the participants in the two workshops to tell stories from their own experience about what has worked in creating open and welcoming churches. In the course of the workshops, we became clear that what works may differ depending on people’s stage of involvement with the church. Stage 1 — People …
Article
Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church has captured the transient attention and imagination which we in America devote to the pop culture of religion. Recently denounced by both the American Jewish Committee and the National Council of Churches, the movement has seldom been out of the public eye, whether at its own instance as in the …
Article
Speaking here in the heart of Lutheran country, the question that is my title may not seem meaningful. There are so many healthy Lutheran congregations full of young adults, youth, and children, that the future of oldline churches does not seem in doubt. But the sections of the country in which this is true are …
Book Chapter
Pastors are not exempt from the temptations of the American Dream — an idolatrous love of family, career success, and a high standard of living. The desire for success, defined by the size of a congregation, can blur the spiritual vision of a gifted pastor. Most do not realize that the battle for the hearts and minds of church members is being waged against the power of a civil religion that forms the life commitments of most church members. A life committed to Jesus as Lord of all life does not preclude loyalty to nation, family, and church. But it does mean a reorientation of the heart so that commitment to nation, family, and church are expressions of love of God.
Article
“How did I ever get talked into this?” I wondered as I ate my first early breakfast at the Robert H. Schuller Institute for Successful Church Leadership. On one side of me was an affable young minister of the Church of God. Across the table was a quietly troubled Assembly of God clergyman, and on …
Book Chapter
Education in general, and not least ecclesiastical education, is subject to constant processes of deterioration and hence in need of periodic self-examination Thirty-six seminaries have given particular help by supplying information about their development during the last twenty years through The Study of Theological Education in the United States and Canada.
Article
In the film made to celebrate its 125th anniversary, the International Red Cross officially designated itself a "movement," and incorporated that identity into its title. Not wanting to be known as an "organization" or "association," the world’s largest humanitarian society prefers to call itself the International Movement of the Red Cross. If oldline Protestant churches …
Continue reading “From Catacomb to Basilica: The Dilemma of Oldline Protestantism”
Article
The decline of members and dollars among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics since the mid-’60s is nowhere more graphically portrayed than at church convocations and national assemblies. Witness the graphs with their plummeting lines, the anguished presentation of statistics by the denominational hierarchy, and the curious blend of pessimism and hope communicated through such newly …
Continue reading “From Guilt to Affirmation in the Mainline Churches”
Article
Since 1960, more than 100 books on the endangered congregation have been published in this country. These books, like game wardens guarding vanishing species of animals, seek to save the churches they see lumbering toward extinction. Powerful stories are told about churches struggling through crisis toward an ultimate cure. Throughout the 1960s, a “ghost” motif …
Book Chapter
Dr. Hall proposes that Christians ought to provide positive guidance for the process of deconstantinianization in which, willy nilly, the formerly ‘established’ forms of the church are presently immersed.
Book Chapter
Intentional disengagement from the dominant culture with which, in the past, the older Protestant denominations n North America have been bound up, is the necessary precondition for a meaningful engagement with that same dominant culture.
Article
Mainline to the Future: Congregations for the 21st Century By Jackson W. Carroll. Westminster John Knox, 130 pp. Transforming the Mainline Church: Lessons in Change from Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Hope. By Robert A. chestnut., Geneva Press, 186 pp. The other day, on a crowded subway, I glimpsed an ad featuring an attractive, curly-haired young woman. …
Continue reading “Learning from New Forms of Church: Gospel Ventures”
Article
Princess Dymphna was a lovely Irish lass who lived in about the fifth century A.D. Her father, the king, lusted after her, and she fled to Gheel in what is now Belgium. There, when the king caught up with her, she still refused his advances, and he had her beheaded. Out of the grisly materials …
Continue reading “Mainstreaming the Alienated: The Church Responds to a ‘New’ Minority”
Article
A fellow pastor tells of the he was sought out for counsel by a student who was about to return to college and join a religious cult. The student had been forced into the pastoral session by his mother. After counseling with nondirective empathy for about an hour, my friend says, he got absolutely nowhere …
Article
There are signs that something may be stirring in the more liberal wing of mainline Protestantism. Here and there new faces appear in the pew. No doubt some appear under the misconception that this pew will shake as it does in places calculated to lie more directly in the line of fire of the saving …
Article
Brian McLaren’s two most important books — A New Kind of Christian and the recent A Generous Orthodoxy – both open by raising the specter of an evangelical pastor leaving the ministry or the church altogether. The fictional lead character in New Kind is poised to abandon his ministry until a wise new friend …
Article
The scene is upper Manhattan, Broadway at Reinhold Niebuhr Place, Union Theological Seminary. Union’s president, Donald Shriver, walks jauntily down the steps to the bustling street and sits down in a wheelchair brought for the experiment, thus putting himself in the place of a student with a handicap. Gazing up from his wheelchair at that …
Article
I loved Denny Spear, my first pastor, because he knew my name and greeted me weekly. What I didn’t know was that Brother Spear, as I called him, was a man of great conviction. He had resigned from his previous church one Sunday when his members voted not to admit black worshipers. Denny and his …
Article
A story has been going around these days to the effect that someone was asked if he believed in infant baptism. “I not only believe in it, I’ve seen it with my own eyes!” That hint of strangeness surrounds popular understanding of the rites of the church, including ordination. Like so many traditions, ordination has …
Article
All theology should be practical. Indeed, for any belief or teaching not to make a difference is for it not to be genuinely Christian theology. Theology is for the sake of God and God’s world through the service of the church. To some extent, everything I know of that is called theology …
Book Chapter
Although the author writes as an English priest and from that tradition, he recognizes that the Church of Englad is but one among many, as is Christianity one among many religions.
Article
Some of my best friends are evangelicals. In many ways, I admire them. Their kind of religion offers a much-needed shot-in-the-arm to my own liberal and often lukewarm faith. At the same time, they disturb me. My evangelical friends and I don’t see things the same way. We read the same Scriptures, we worship the …
Continue reading “Progeny of Programmers: Evangelical Religion and the Television Age”
Article
Helping a congregation to identify itself as a Progressive Christian Church can be a challenge. In September of 1999 I was called to minister at the Church of Universal Fellowship in Orono, Maine. This church has identified itself as a Christian Community Church and believes that it is on the cutting edge of ecumenical Christianity …
Book Chapter
This Prologue summarizes the book. There are three parts: Part 1 is an analysis of the origins of current attitudes about church and family. Part 2 is a discussion of the way values often believed to be “God-given and biblical” are related to the values of the American Dream. In Part 3, describes the role of church leaders in planning educational programs that are supportive of members of traditional and nontraditional families, but not dependent on “the Christian home” as the primary agency of Christian spiritual formation.
Article
The Danforth Study of Campus Ministries, published ten years ago under the audaciously inclusive title The Church, the University, and Social Policy, has probably had little measurable impact on any of the three communities addressed — which focus respectively on goodness, truth and power — much less on strengthening their linkage with one another. (Indeed, …
Article
It’s Tuesday morning and time for my weekly meeting with Jack, the senior pastor of our church. It’s a beautiful day in Missoula, so I suggest we have our meeting at Bernice’s, a local coffee shop. Just before Big Dipper Ice Cream, we turn down Hazel Street and bead north toward the river. In the …
Article
Every ten years, it seems, the editors of the CHRISTIAN CENTURY ask me to write a piece on how my mind has changed. At first I’m pleased: Those people in Chicago still remember me; what is more, they apparently think their readers would still be interested in my ideas. Then, after this first flush of. …
Continue reading “Reflections of an Ecclesiastical Expatriate”
Article
A cartoon portrays two young men sitting in the sun, wearing their baseball caps backward. One bright young man remarks to the other: “Somebody ought to invent a cap that would give a guy some shade.” When we think about the challenges of the present and future church, we may want to contemplate this image. …
Article
The two questions have been asked most often since American Mainline Religion was published are, “Are you hopeful about the future of the oldline churches?” and “What can be done to turn things around?” I hesitate to make predictions, but I’ll risk this one: a major mission funding crisis is on the horizon, the result …
Continue reading “Revisioning the Future of Oldline Protestantism”
Article
Though the past quarter century has been a challenging, sometimes discouraging time for mainline congregations and their leaders, many positive things, often hidden from public view or statistical analysis, have been going on. Many mainline congregations have learned to see scripture afresh, have profited from more biblical preaching and have rediscovered the power and beauty …
Continue reading “Seven Ways to Change Congregational Culture: Renewed Life”
Article
Last year the Church of the Resurrection in suburban West Chicago closed its doors and put its building up for sale. The Episcopal congregation had suffered membership losses 14 years earlier when some conservative members left to start their own church, also called the Church of the Resurrection, in nearby Glen Ellyn. The new congregation …
Article
I believe the Church stands at a critical time in its life. The world is in the throes of incredible, fundamental changes. Cultural diversity is growing in some places; attempts to maintain ethnic purity lead to battles in others. Economies are more and more interdependent and undergoing massive dislocation. Witness the transitions to market economies …
Continue reading “The Christian Church: Engaging the Future”
Article
I count it an honor and a privilege to have been invited to be with you this evening, to have been accorded an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the United Theological College in Bangalore and the theological communities of Princeton, and to participate in this Valedictory Service. I extend to you for whom this …
Article
Although I have written a good deal about the church over the past three or four decades (more, probably, than is decent!), I feel increasingly that ecclesiology is one of the most difficult subjects for present-day Christians to sort out. This, I would say, is due to the fact that we are the generations in …
Continue reading “The Church: Beyond the Christian Religion”
Article
Most of us assume that churches have always been around, that they have always functioned more or less as they do now, and that they have always been organized in what we recognize as a traditional manner. Such, however, is not the case. A church, like every other institution, is a product of history. It …
Continue reading “The Emerging Church: A New Form for a New Era”
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) Marcus Braybrooke guides us through the various forms of Christian beliefs and practices. He asks for understanding of the vast differences between various Christian approaches. His hope is that this writing will be a doorway to the Christian world for the non-believer and the believer.
Article
When she came to church it was a big event. She wore her nicest dress and a grand Sunday hat. But then she wouldn’t appear again for months. Every time I visited her she would assure me that she wasn’t backsliding. “Don’t worry — when I’m not at church on Sunday I’m watching Joel Osteen …
Article
Perhaps that is why the Scriptures often construe the ethics of the believing community by various codes of rules. Such codes ordered the moral life of each community in terms of specific, historical and relevant descriptions of God’s will. which in turn made obedience easier and covenantal blessings more immediate. It is interesting, for instance, …
Article
Gatherings of the worldwide Anglican Communion have been contentious events in recent years. On one occasion, two bishops were participating in a Bible study, one from Africa, the other from the U.S. As the hours went by, tempers frayed as the African expressed his confidence in the clear words of scripture, while the American stressed …
Continue reading “The Power of the Bible in the Global South”
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) Supported by intensive research, Dr. Niebuhr reevaluates the role of the church in American life and its relationship to the seminary. He arrives at a fresh concept of the ministry, and restates the idea of the theological school.
Article
The Lausanne Conference was the opening door toward wider Christian fellowship. It registered the fact that there is a movement in the whole church for the unity of Christendom which the love of our separate communions will not be able to suppress. We appear to have gone the limit in our divisions. Any other divisions …
Article
1. The great bulk of the people in the pews do not really believe in "the church." They believe in religion. They believe in the voluntary, inchoate fellowship of worshippers whose lives should, all other things being equal, set an example of the best that America offers. But they do not believe in the church …
Article
After Our Likeness: The Church in the Image of the Trinity, by Miroslav Volf. Eerdmans, 313 pp., $28.00 paperback. Good books provide readers with fresh insight and useful information. Great books, especially in theology, range over several disciplines, revisit enduring human patterns and then weave new paradigms to explain old concerns. Miroslav Volf’s book is …
Continue reading “The Shape of the Church: Congregational and Trinitarian”
Article
A team of evangelical Christians invaded Shipshewana, Indiana, to bring the lost of Shipshewana to Christ. In front of Yoder’s drygoods store one of these earnest souls confronted a Mennonite farmer with the challenge, “Brother, are you saved?” The farmer was stunned by the question. All his years of attending the Peach Bloom Mennonite congregation …
Article
I have a practical problem. I joined the Presbyterian Church as an adult, in significant measure because I admire this denomination’s theology of the church and its processes for making decisions. Today I find myself in strong disagreement with the Church about an important matter. How shall I conduct myself now that I think that …
Continue reading “True Confession: A Presbyterian Dissenter Thinks About the Church”
Article
So-called “mainline” or “liberal” denominations have recently been taking a public-relations beating for lack of growth and for neglect of mission. Many possible causes have been suggested, among them a general conservative trend of our times, greater faithfulness by liberals to the radical demands of the gospel, and greater expression by conservatives of warmth, zeal …
Continue reading “Unrecognized Internal Threats to Liberal Churches”
Article
Book Review: Brides, Inc.: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition. By Vicki Howard. University of Pennsylvania Press, 320 pp. One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding. By Rebecca Mead. Penguin, 256 pp., $25.95. Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings. Edited by Colleen Curran. Vintage, …
Article
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition By Christine Pohl. (Eerdmans, 185 pp.) My wife and I were visiting some old friends, a couple in their 80s whose health had been failing. At the time of our visit, the husband was confined to a wheelchair and was struggling with dementia. He was only intermittently …
Article
What, precisely, is a good church? How would you know one when you see it? A popular answer these days is that a good church is a “purpose driven” church. The phrase and the concept come from Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, California, one of the largest and fastest …
Article
I. CHRIST AND THE LUKEWARMNESS OF OUR CHURCHES The general thesis of these lectures is that one major reason for the decline of our oldline churches is theological and that at least this cause of the decline could be reversed. I am trying to be careful here. There are certainly nontheological causes of the decline …
Article
II. CHRIST AND EXCLUSIVISM The unifying theme of my lectures is that the failure of the church to think through the meaning of Christ for our time is the deepest cause of the lukewarmness in our oldline churches, which in turn is the deepest cause of our decline. Although I believe this is true on …
Article
III. CHRIST AND MAMMON John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, to which I belong, had strong views about money. In his later years, surveying the remarkable success of the movement he had started, he said that he had no fear about its continuation. His great fear was for its inner spirit. He had …
Article
Most people haven’t any interest in religion – mainly because they haven’t any interest in God. If asked as part of a survey whether they “believed in God”, many would say that they did, but there be would few if any differences in their lives compared to those who deny the existence of God. For …
Article
Book Review: Apologia: Contextualization, Globalization and Mission in Theological Education by Max L. Stackhouse and others (Eerdmans, 237 pp., $14.95 paperback). Text: Theological education today is characterized by genuine confusion about what should constitute the curriculum of basic degree programs at the graduate-professional level. Though debate about requirements has always me on, it was once …
Continue reading “Why Should Anyone Believe? Apologetics and Theological Education”
