In the last twenty-five years, about 40 million people have stopped attending church. We can’t blame this on COVID. This trend was well underway before COVID ever appeared. If this fact doesn’t wake us up to the reality Christians are facing in the Global West, I don’t know what will. To learn more about this…
In this episode we take on the topic of revival. What is it? What has it looked like historically? Why is it breaking out in so many parts of the world, but not in North America? You can find the podcast here on iTunes. Otherwise, click here. We mention a couple of resources in this episode.…
A couple of weeks ago I went to hear Rolland Baker speak at a nearby church. Rolland and his wife, Heidi, are the founders of Iris Global, an organization that has planted over 2000 churches in Mozambique and expanded its operations to around 20 other nations. These are two amazing people. They and their ministry…
You’ve probably seen the much-ballyhooed PRRI survey, a segment of which indicates that white evangelical Christians feel that Christians are more discriminated against than Muslims in the United States. (If you haven’t, you have to scroll down for a while to get to this table.) Other groups interviewed for the survey disagree. I was intrigued by…
Last year I was at a conference where Larry Randolph was one of the speakers, and he said something that I’ve been ruminating over ever since. He said that he was praying against revival in the United States. This seemed like a very odd statement from someone who is a part of a charismatic revival movement associated…
How do we get more millennials into church? In the ecclesial world I live in, this seems to be the question of the day, and there is no shortage of answers. I’m not a millennial. Many have been my students. I count several as friends. There are even a couple of professors on my faculty who…
I’ve been teaching a class on church renewal this semester, and as part of the course I asked my students to watch and critique a video that kicked off the “Rethink Church” campaign. This video is a few years old now, and I remember blogging about it when it came out. Call me crazy, but I found it irksome that we would…
At the outset of his book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (3rd ed., Oxford, 2011, p. 1), Philip Jenkins writes, We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide. Over the last five centuries, the story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of Europe…
Earlier this month I had the privilege of traveling to Cuba with a group from United Theological Seminary. We accompanied a mission team from Trinity Family Life Center, a United Methodist Congregation in Pickerington, Ohio, led by Rev. Tim Burden. There aren’t sufficient words to describe what is happening there. On almost any night of the…
Recently I was invited to preach at worship during our master’s intensive at United. The theme for the week was Wisdom. Prov 24:1-14 Do not envy the wicked, nor desire to be with them; 2for their minds devise violence, and their lips talk of mischief. 3By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding…