Children in the Church Gathering

David Fitch deals with the issue of "Our Children Don’t Get Anything Out of the Service": Worship as Training for Life. I like what he says to parents:

... what I do when parents say to me “Our Children Don’t Get Anything Out of the Service” is a gentile nudge around three statements. I ask these parents, please remember three things:

1.) There’s an encounter with the living God here at our worship service. Your son/daughter need to be coached into that reality. They need to be prepared for the reality that we gather into His presence so that we might in turn know His presence in every area of our everyday lives....

2.) But Discerning God is Rarely Immediately Obvious. God is hidden. So your son and/or daughter and our church need to learn and be sensitized to discerning the presence of God. If we put God into sound bites or hyped up worship experiences, then your child will learn instinctually that church is the only place he or she can find God. And this simply isn’t true....

3.) Children Ultimately Will Follow/Imitate Their Parents and Adults They Can Respect – therefore one’s children and how they are progressing can function as an excellent diagnostic for our own level of engagement with God. I must be careful to not overstate this because children all develop differently. But let’s face it, eh? If we are forcing our children to do something we are ourselves are disconnected from, it ain’t going to happen....

Discipleship Resource

Looking for customized, biblical discipleship material? I haven't searched through the site and material but Downline Ministries looks like it might be a helpful resource.

Sunday is for Encouragement

Worship. On one hand, we say it involves all of life - our work, our play; not just Sunday but Monday to Saturday. On the other hand, we say it's what we do on Sunday in the church service/gathering/meeting - and not everything in the service, just the part where we sing; and not always everything we sing, just the music that makes us feel close to God.

Steve Atkerson helpfully cuts through this and reminds us to "Worship At All Times, But Meet Primarily to Edify.

The reason for “meeting together” is to “encourage” one another. We are to think of ways to “spur” one another on toward love and good deeds. In this sense the church meeting is to be designed to equip the believer to go out and worship during the week. As Francis Scott Key wrote, “And since words can never measure, let my life show forth thy praise.”

What's the Role of the Pastor?

Mark Galli and Tod Bolsinger debate what it means to be a pastor.

First Mark Galli raises some concerns about the pastor as mega-church entrepeneur in this article: Why We Need More 'Chaplains' and Fewer Leaders.

Tod Bolsinger responds by contending that we need pastors who are missional leaders: We Need Chaplains...Just not More Of Them...Not Now.

MG pushes back on the pastor as missional entrepeneur: Mark Galli Responds: Pastors in a changing world--Leaders or Chaplains?.

TB insists that pastors are called to love people and lead them into mission: Leaders Who Tend.

I've enjoyed the discussion. I'm especially going to think on this for a while:

Let us remember that the early church made its way in a culture that was pluralism on steroids, and highly relativistic at that. Such was the legacy of the Greek mystery religions, among others. A god for every city. A philosophy for every man. And no one having the temerity to say he had the way, the truth, and the life—because each worshipped their own gods (Acts 17:16ff). The church grew up in this setting, and eventually transformed Roman culture not by being missional in the way it is talked about today, but when it acted like the church I’ve described above. No bold plans to transform society. [No] big dreams of changing culture. Just a focus on congregational life: worship, preaching, catechesis, and simple acts of charity (taking care of widows and orphans, attending to the sick during plagues, and so forth).

Rethinking Incarnational Ministry

Justin Taylor provides the lecture of J. Todd Billings in which he talks about Incarnational Ministry and Union with Christ. Billings challenges the popular notion of incarnational ministry and proposes we think of relational/servant ministry arising from our union with Christ: "The act of God becoming incarnate is not a human act, it is a divine act - only something God can do. Rather than that being our pattern we should look to the humanity of Jesus Christ the servant." Worth the time to listen and reflect on.