By: Lynda Gittens on January 11, 2018
James Smith, How (Not) to be Secular In the Introduction, Author Smith shares several points of views from other secular age authors. For example, Author Julian Barnes, of the book “Nothing to be Frighten of”, has a few quotes: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him” (5) making reference to his missing…
By: Jim Sabella on January 11, 2018
I own a field guide on mushrooms, one on birds and one on rocks and minerals, but I don’t have one on living in the secular age. How (Not) to be Secular by James K. A. Smith is what its author calls “a field guide” on Taylor’s A Secular Age. [1] While A Secular Age asks…
By: Stu Cocanougher on January 11, 2018
I serve at a multi-staff church in Fort Worth, Texas. One of my roles that I have is to develop evangelism strategies for our church. As I review and evaluate plans, strategies, and programs that have to do with leading people to Christ, a word that often comes up is the word “secular.” This week…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on January 10, 2018
“even as faith endures in our secular age, believing doesn’t come easy. Faith is fraught; confession is haunted by an inescapable sense of its contestability. We don’t believe instead of doubting; we believe while doubting. We’re all Thomas now.”[1] Is this all there is? A question some ponder daily and one that some only reflect…
By: Mary Walker on January 10, 2018
If Taylor is right, it seems to suggest that the Christian response to such converts to unbelief is not to have an argument about the data or “evidences” but rather to offer an alternative story that offers a more robust, complex understanding of the Christian faith (p. 77).[1] Coming fresh from our study of…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on January 9, 2018
On a recent trip to California, I went to a Christmas Eve service to a church boasting an impressive 15,000 members and growing. The multiple sites, large facilities, and talented staff were impressive. Sitting in the huge auditorium amongst a throng of people, the pastor’s greeting was confusing as he mentioned he didn’t appreciate the…
By: Chip Stapleton on December 1, 2017
In Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement authors Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori assert that, contrary to the images that the word sometimes conjures – like the picture of the snake handlers on the right – that Pentecostalism is a ‘highly adaptable movement and typically incorporates features of the local cultural context’ (20).…
By: Kristin Hamilton on November 30, 2017
…I think I’d like to try dating Progressive Pentecostalism. It’s not like I’m simply church “shopping.” It’s more that I am looking for a community that I can spend my life with, that makes my heart race with the presence of the Spirit, and makes me want to put in the work of building community.…
By: Lynda Gittens on November 30, 2017
Pentecostals were referred to during my times as ‘holiness’ people. They played loud guitars and drums while jumping and dancing around. They had to be able to speak in tongues and stayed in the church for hours. At least that is what we were told. My first experience with the holiness church was at the…
By: Katy Drage Lines on November 30, 2017
Have I shared this story before? If so, it bears repeating because it is one of my favorites from our time in Turkana. It goes something like this: While chatting with Turkana church leaders about New Testament miracles, Kip mentioned Jesus and his early followers raising people from the dead. But that doesn’t seem to…
By: Jim Sabella on November 28, 2017
At the very beginning of Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement authors Miller and Yamamori state: “Pentecostalism is not simply a set of beliefs; it’s an experience.”[1] In this one sentence they sum up the whole of the book and in many ways, the reason for the growth of the Pentecostal movement,…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on November 28, 2017
“For Pentecostals, worship provides the opportunity to experience an alternative reality. It is a moment when mind and body can potentially connect; it is a space in which worshippers imagine impossible possibilities; it is a time when they are filled with new hope and desire for a better world.”[1] I have spent much of my…
By: Mary Walker on November 28, 2017
Pentecostals have begun to model their behavior after a Jesus who both preached about the coming kingdom and healed people and ministered to their social needs.[1] Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori were having dinner at a restaurant in the Philippines when a ‘marriage made in Heaven occurred’. Miller who had written on fast-growing, non-mainline…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on November 27, 2017
To be truthful, I cringed just reading the title of this book: Global Pentecostalism. It is my humble opinion, we need to stop compartmentalizing Christians with labels like “Pentecostal” and “conservative” and start seeing each Christian as a valuable member of the body. As Christians, we are all in need of the transforming power of…
By: Stu Cocanougher on November 26, 2017
As someone who regularly interacts with missionaries, studies missiology, and leads outreach ministries in my own city, I have witnessed the development of a new type of strategy for both overseas missions and local church work. Before discussing this new strategy, let me first address some of the strategies that evangelical Protestants have employed: …
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on November 17, 2017
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”[1] – Winston Churchill How often do we as leaders deal with the reality of failure? To achieve success failure is inevitable. While many leaders know this is true there remains a challenge as to how to deal…
By: Kristin Hamilton on November 16, 2017
“The fundamental rules that have governed how relationships work are being rewritten, because of easy, no-cost information sharing.” – Charlene Li[1] Relationships are changing as quickly as technology is evolving. In the past decade, the meaning of the word “friend” has shifted, “messaging” now means several different things, and no one could ever have predicted…
By: Chip Stapleton on November 16, 2017
This week we have been reading Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead by Charlene Li,. Open Leadership is a very popular business leadership book that is, ostensibly about how to integrate the burgeoning world of social media successfully into your business and into the way you lead in your company, in a…
By: Katy Drage Lines on November 16, 2017
For the past two days, I’ve been wearing a different hat than normal. As I’ve mentioned in previous conversations, I have the honor of serving as the chair of the board of a non-profit organization, Christian HolyLand Foundation. [1] Yesterday and today, we held our annual face-to-face board meeting, followed this afternoon by an annual meeting…
By: Jim Sabella on November 16, 2017
Honestly, what do I do? I want to be a realist optimist instead of a fearful skeptic, maybe a cautious tester, but probably not the transparent evangelist. [1] But we are living and leading in a time when more people than ever before are willing to share openly and publicly about themselves, their work and…
