Posts Tagged ‘church’
Home Again
Jun.11.2007
A few weeks back, we received an invitation from our old church home in London, Ontario. West Park was hosting its 46th anniversary service and the last such service at its current building. The church is nearing completion of a 55,000 square foot facility in the northwest area of London.
It was wonderful to go back to this church after almost a decade and still feel like we were part of the family. Such a great community.
We were given a tour of the new building. Quite an accomplishment for this congregation.
I found the experience of going back to London difficult as I really do miss the life we enjoyed there. The GTA is many things but it does not feel like home to me. More like a place to stay while I am working.
Here is a picture of the church. Almost finished.
Men In Church
Apr.16.2007
I came across some interesting observations about men and church from this site:
- A typical church draws an adult crowd that’s 61% female, 39% male.
- On any given Sunday there are 13 million more adult women than men in America’s churches.
- Almost 25 percent of married, churchgoing women will worship without their husbands.
- Midweek activities often draw 70 to 80 percent female participants.
- The majority of church employees are women (except for ordained clergy, who are overwhelmingly male).
- As many as 90 percent of the boys who are being raised in church will abandon it by their 20th birthday. Many of these boys will never return.
- More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and five out of six call themselves Christians. But only two out of six attend church on a given Sunday.
- A significant number of churchgoing men attend out of habit, unaffected by what they hear.
- Quite a few men go to church simply to keep their wives/mothers/girlfriends happy.
Christianity Sinks Like The Titanic
Feb.28.2007
James Cameron, the man who brought us Terminator, Rambo, Aliens and Titanic, now ushers in the fall of Christianity.
I am off to Bermuda tomorrow. I heard that the Bermuda Triangle is probably as reliable a source for finding the truth about Jesus as the upcoming James Cameron documentary. Sorry that I will miss the broadcast.
In case you missed the fuss, there is a lot of interesting reading in the blogosphere these days. Here are a few of my favourites.
Time Magazine offers this take on the claim that Jesus had a family tomb in Jerusalem. Overlooked it was for a couple of thousand years until the Terminator came along. Larry King waded in the rubble with his finely tuned journalistic edge. Other blogs chimed in: Darryl Bock, Hot Air and Andreas Kostenberger. I am sure the list goes on.
Oh well. The debate is a step up from the one that claims Jesus never existed at all.
Interesting quote from a recent James Cameron interview: “Everyone around me had basically said, ‘You stink. You suck. You don’t know what you are doing.’”
On this one, I have to agree.
Dwayne’s Journey
Feb.05.2007
My wife and I had dinner with friends last night. A wonderful couple. They moved out to Saskatoon and it looks as though they will be returning to Ontario.
We shared stories about our respective experiences with small churches. They had gone through some challenges with their own church. And it led to a heart-breaking story about Dwayne Harm.
Dwayne was a 37 year old husband and father of 2. He was a church-planter and pastor of a 4 year old church. He was struck with renal cancer and died within a couple of months of the initial discovery of the cancer. His blog chronicles a brief and candid battle with the disease. In his own words: “my journey through this part of the adventure God has for me may be worth reading about.”
It is very difficult to read his journey. He talks to all of the human emotion that goes into life.
His journey is worth reading. You can find it here. The Mennonite Brethren Herald has more background on Dwayne here.
Christmas Eve
Dec.26.2006
Christmas eve is always a special time for our family. On Sunday evening, my oldest son and I were playing for a Christmas eve event at a church in Newmarket. The band had a leader, a drummer, my son on bass, me on guitar and a harp (harmonica).
We played traditional Christmas carols although with a variety of arrangements from folk and country to rock. We did a great audience participation segment against The Twelve Days of Christmas. We lit candles. We remembered the reason for celebrating Christmas.
For whatever reason, it was a perfect evening. Warm, intimate, friendly, casual and musical. My whole family was there with me.
A wonderful, magical moment in time.
Poor Leaders and Unhealthy Churches
Dec.18.2006
We recently left a church due to some painfully obvious leadership issues. And it does not look like things are getting any better since we left. Unfortunate.
Sadly, many churches put exactly the wrong type of individual into a leadership role at a critical time in the church’s history. Poorly equipped individuals with no real leadership strengths. And the work of the church suffers as a consequence.
Here is an excerpt on the importance of leadership to the health of a church from James Tippin’s blog:
Recently, while discussing the role of the pastor with a few young church planters, the comment was made that the pastor IS the HEAD leader in the church and that anyone in leadership should recognize his position and fall in line under his authority. I don’t know if I have heard a statement as horrible as that one in some time.
Pastors are leaders because people are following them. Leaders with no one behind them are just “men taking a walk” as it has been so eloquently stated. If you have to say that you are THE leader, then you are not the leader of anything. If a pastor wants to lead, he must first care, coach and shepherd. These qualities are essential in anyone who feels called by God to pastor.
The hardship over ‘dictator’ leaders comes from the dogmatic and stern approach by pastors who feel that they have the calling of Paul on their lives. As we proclaim Truth and Coach those in our care, we must be very careful to remain humble and lead without throwing our weight around.
To oversee is a special calling by God and is extremely delicate. Just like with my kids. I have been charged as an authority over them by God but their obedience to me is a choice and a gift. My goal is to coach them to love God and others and become Kingdom minded. When my children know that I first love them, they then respond to my leadership.
The same is true as pastors. The people that we shepherd must first understand that we love them and want the best for their lives. If we really don’t, we should get out of the ministry quickly. When others understand that our desire is to see them pant after God as we help guide them, they will follow our leadership. If they don’t follow us, we are not the leader.
A Different Experience
Nov.17.2006
We’ve certainly had our own challenges with church experiences over the years. And, unfortunately, I am not surprised that this fellow had such a difficult experience with a Christian family.
Community and unconditional love seem to be strangely absent in much of the Christian experience.
Here is the full story.
My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists
When Polish student Michael Gromek, 19, went to America on a student exchange, he found himself trapped in a host family of Christian fundamentalists. What followed was a six-month hell of dawn church visits and sex education talks as his new family tried to banish the devil from his soul. Here’s his story.
Editor’s Note: The following story first appeared in SchoolSpiegel, a SPIEGEL ONLINE Web site that solicits original contributions from school kids about their experiences. The site also features first-hand accounts of foreign exchange students.
“When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, ‘Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.’ At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.
Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.
My host parents treated me like a five-year-old. They gave me lollipops. They woke me every Sunday morning at 6:15 a.m., saying ‘Michael, it’s time to go to church.’ I hated that sentence. When I didn’t want to go to church one morning, because I had hardly slept, they didn’t allow me to have any coffee.
One day I was talking to my host parents about my mother, who is separated from my father. They were appalled — my mother’s heart was just as possessed by the devil as mine, they exclaimed. God wanted her to stay with her husband, they said.
Then, seeing as we were already on the topic of God’s will, the religious zealots finally brought up a subject which had clearly been on their minds for a long time: They wanted me to help them set up a Fundamentalist Baptist church in my home country of Poland. It was God’s will, they said. They tried to slip the topic casually into conversation, but it really shocked me — I realized that was the only reason they had welcomed me into their family. They had already started construction work in Krakow — I was to help them with translations and with spreading their faith via the media.
It was clear to me that there was no way I was going to do that. The family was appalled. It was a weird situation. After all, these people were my only company at the time. If I hadn’t kept in touch with home through e-mail, I might have been sucked into that world.
It was only after four months that I decided to change my host family. I had kept hoping that things might improve, but it was futile. Telling them that I wanted to go was the most unpleasant moment I experienced in that half year. Of course they didn’t understand — how could they? They had grown up with their faith and were convinced of it, and then suddenly I turned up and refused to fit in.
From that moment on, I counted the days. The two months that followed my decision were hell. My host parents detested me. There were constant rows. I could sense that they just wanted to get rid of me. They didn’t know what to do with me any more.
67 days later, I was finally in a new family. They were young, actually more friends than host parents, and I was very happy there. Because my new family was only 50 kilometers away from the other one, I was distrustful at first and afraid that things wouldn’t be any better. But the change was worth it.
Despite everything, I still haven’t come to terms with my experience. I want to write to the religious family soon and explain to them, clearly and calmly, why things went so wrong. It shouldn’t just end this way.”
Via.
Wild Horses
Nov.13.2006
Gordon MacDonald offers this interesting perspective on what one can learn from the Ted Haggard incident. His view is that every person has the same potential for duplicity:
“Within each of us there is a herd of wild horses all wanting to run loose.”
And he makes the following observation:
When I see a leader who becomes stubborn and rigid, who becomes increasingly less compassionate toward his adversaries, increasingly tyrannical in his own organization, who rouses anger and arrogance in others, I wonder if he is not generating all of this heat because he is trying so hard to say “no” to something surging deep within his own soul. Are his words and deeds not so much directed against an enemy “out there” as they are against a much more cunning enemy within his own soul.
New Church Part 2
Nov.12.2006
I will be playing this morning at a new church. Actually, it is an old church for us. We had attended this church for a few years when we first moved to Newmarket. They had heard that we had recently left our church and the worship leader called me to see if I would be willing to lend a hand with their worship team.
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