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All posts from "May 2008"
May 19, 2008
Baby Boomers and New Realities of Today's Church
The Present Future by Reggie McNeal offers six realities facing the church today and what we can do about it.
As Baby Boomers search for significance, meaning, and purpose for their lives, the local church is one place they will look. Today, local churches and the worldwide church are going through profound changes. In order for churches to minister effectively to Boomers in their search, pastors and church leaders must understand the changing spiritual dynamics confronting the church and our culture.
In his book, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church (2003, Jossey-Bass Publishers), Reggie McNeal gives us six new realities confronting the church:
Continue reading "Baby Boomers and New Realities of Today's Church"…
May 19, 2008
Generations of Faith
Where does the 30-something church live in community with the 60-, 70-, and 80- somethings?
“Thy faithfulness continues to all generations.” —Psalm 199:90
“(They) who have clean hands and pure hearts … such is the generation of those who seek Him.” —Psalm 24: 4, 6
“Let us be a generation of those who seek Him.” —Charlie Hill
“I have a prayer request,” said the white-haired woman sitting in her wheelchair toward the back of the room. “I want to be useful.” Those five words—“I want to be useful”—hung in the air for a moment, and then there was a chorus of affirmation coming from others in the room. “Me, too, I want to do something meaningful with the life I have left.” “There is nothing worse than feeling useless.” “I want to find work to do for Jesus.”
May 6, 2008
Young at Heart
With an average age of 82, this group of seniors sings to standing-room-only crowds.
Young at Heart is a group of senior citizens in Northampton, Mass., led by their director, Bob Cilman. They perform contemporary songs by bands like Sonic Youth, the Ramones, and Coldplay. They regale audiences with songs that are honest, intelligent, and at times even deep, taking a 90-minute nonstop show from theater stages to prison yards, moving listeners from laughter to tears and back to laughter. We’re offering you a link so you can enjoy for yourself the Today Show’s Bob Dotson’s American Story.
Dixie and I went to see an afternoon showing, wondering if we’d be the only ones in the theater. We had to sit on the third row from the front! The place was packed with patrons ranging from young children to adults with walkers. We rate all our movies on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best. We gave Young at Heart a solid fifteen and decided right there to move to Northhampton so we could join the group ourselves!
May 6, 2008
Congregational Model for Caregiving
An array of ministry possibilities that embody Christ’s love for aging families.
As we go through middlescence, our children go through adolescence, our parents head into convalescence, and the "sandwich generation" often turns into a "hoagie." What goes for the home also goes for the church. God has given us the ideal design for handling the challenge in which we often find ourselves when caring for our older loved ones, both within the nuclear family as well as in the church family.
I’m suggesting an array of ministry possibilities that embody Christ’s love for aging families, while at the same time providing a model of how the biblical mandate can be lived out through congregational responses. While these are drawn from the ministry of First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, California, I’m not intimating that EV Free of Fullerton is a model church in this regard. Instead I offer Webster’s reminder that the word model is a “small imitation of the real thing”! Christ is our ultimate model for ministry (Is. 61; Lk 4:16-22), not the church. Yet there is much we can learn from one another by continuing to do church according to Christ’s model.
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