A few weeks ago Rick Warren held a conference called Radicalis. I was really interested in seeing the live stream of Andy Stanley speaking. They gave him a section to speak on preaching.
I missed it, but here and here are two blogs posts that wrote about it that are quite helpful. And if you never read the blog post where I reviewed and fleshed out his system you can click here.
During the month of March there will be two church growth conferences sponsored by NEXT Coaching Networks. Dr. Ed Stetzer will be speaking at both of them.
One will be held in Warner Robins, GA on March 1, 2010. For more information and to register for this one click here.
The other conference will be held in Kissimmee, Fl on March 12, 2010. For more information and to register for this one click here.
I think they should be good!
You may or may not be aware of the discussions taking place related to the book Pagan Christianity. I wrote a blog post a little over a year ago called My Problem With Pagan Christianity. In fact, I recently found out that if you google “Pagan Christianity Book Review,” my blog comes up with the top hit, which explains why I’ve been getting a lot more traffic lately.
Well, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, and one of the leading voices in the church world recently decided to take on what they view as being inaccuracies and weaknesses in much of the book.
You can read the whole post here. I’d recommend downloading the pdf here, though, because it includes all the footnotes which can be quite valuable.
Here’s a preview of some of his conclusions, though:
Even with these qualifications and points of agreement this book as a whole is not recommended, and many of its arguments are to be outright rejected. The tone of the book itself is problematic, because the authors are so sure of themselves. When one finds that their biblical and historical claims, which were carried with such confidence, are not all historically and biblically viable, their certainties become almost comical. Suddenly the authors warning at the beginning of the book (“If you are unwilling to have your Christianity seriously examined, do not read beyond this page”) doesn’t sound so ominous anymore.
I encourage you to make up your mind for yourself, though.
[image by bkingr]
A few days ago, Churchdrop.com hit the blogosphere with news of a new iPhone app to study the Bible. To see his post click here. Seems pretty cool. It’s called the Wave Study Bible.
One of the really exciting parts about it for me is that you can easily search in the original languages very easily. If you’re familiar with BibleWorks for PC or Accordance for mac, this seems like a simple and portable version of each of those, except easy to use for the average person.
It doesn’t seem to quite be out yet, unfortunately, but I put my email in so I could get more info when it’s launched.
Check out the video below:
If there’s one conversation I enjoy having with my leaders is the difference between principles and methods. Here’s a simple way to understand the difference between the two: “Principles never change. Methods always do.”
Principles last forever. Methods must be changed with each new generation to be able to reach them. The issue comes when we confuse the two and make sacred cows of a method. That’s why so many churches have declined into oblivion. Because they associated holding onto “truth” with a particular method. Unless we learn to separate the two many more ships will sink unnecessarily.
What do you think? What are some other ways that we often confuse methods or principles?
[image by PJTaylorPhoto]
It seems that in the world of speaking, there have been quite a few changes. A few years ago there was a trend to keep messages very, very short.
Recently, there’s been quite a few speakers out there that actually speak quite long (45 minutes to an hour), and yet they’re part of growing churches with many listeners on podcast such as Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, Matt Chandler, and a few others.
One of the top speakers at the moment is also the pastor of the second largest church in North America: Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch.tv. He recently wrote a short, but very interesting blog post concerning how long speakers should speak. You can read it here.
Here’s a great quote from it:
“As a communicator I try to guard against sharing material that I’m emotionally attached to that doesn’t hold a high impact value for the listener.”
In other words, there are things that are really interesting and fascinating to us, but that might not be that interesting or relevant to the listener. I’ve often made this mistake, but realize it only when I’m in the middle of sharing the story. Most often it happens in the middle of a message when I try to veer “off script.” I think of something or a story, and I launch into it. I can tell the story well because it’s my story, but I realize afterwards that it slowed the pace of the message down, and I could have done without it.
Make sure to to read the post and also the comments that follow. People ask him some followup questions and the answers he gives are quite fascinating.
For the record, I usually aim for 30 minutes, but normally end up speaking about 40 min.
What about you? How long are your messages usually? If you’re not a speaker, what do you think is the optimal length for a message?
[image by Catherine]
A few months ago Carlos Whittaker, worship leader and blogger at Ragamuffin Soul passed onto me a helpful secret to knowing what songs are being sung nationally in churches all over. This was as a result of a question I asked him on Twitter.
If you’re on Twitter, go to the search area and type in #sundaysetlist. Every week worship leaders are sharing through this “hashtag” the songs that they’re using for the coming weekend, or set lists that they used the previous weekend.
If you’re not on Twitter, you can still find this info. Still go to the Twitter homepage. In the middle of the page it says, “See what people are saying about…” In this area type in “#sundaysetlist”. See the pic below:
Even if you don’t have a Twitter account it will search through all the public profiles and pull up the info.
Pretty nice.
That’s it. So if you’re not sure what to use for this weekend, or are just curious what songs are making the rounds in churches all over, this is a simple way to find out.
How does your worship team normally go about selecting songs for the weekend? How do they stay in touch with some of the latest songs?
