Men: Less Hugging in Church, Please

From Christiantoday.com:

A new survey has suggested that men who go to church would like less hugging and holding hands and more singing of anthems and “proclamational” songs.

A survey of 400 readers of Christian men’s magazine Sorted found that 60 per cent of men did not like flowers and embroidered banners in church. Around 52 per cent also said they were not too keen on dancing in church either.

The survey suggested that men were uncomfortable with physical contact such as holding hands and with activities such as sitting in circles to share their feelings.

Almost 60 per cent of the respondents said they enjoyed singing in church, but many added comments saying they preferred anthemic or “proclamational” songs over emotional love songs.

Sermons and talks were popular with respondents, with 72 per cent saying they were the best part of the service. [...]

 

On Losing Heart in Ministry

It’s true–it’s so easy to get worn out and grow weary in ministry. This post from desiringgod.org really spoke out to me:

What does it mean to lose heart?

To lose heart is to lose our courage or lose the will to go on. It means to be utterly spiritless and worn out, to throw in the towel. It is more than discouragement. It’s discouragement to point of quitting the race before it is over.

God forbid that any of us should throw in the towel of our gospel ministries! We are those who do not lose heart! We do not throw in the towel of displaying the glory of God to the world! To throw in the towel of the gospel is to have believed in vain, to make shipwreck of our faith.

There are glorious promises that tell us that if we have indeed received this ministry that we will indeed not lose heart (John 10:27-30 for one). No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck us from his hand.

How do we keep from being among those who just give up? [...]

 

‘Defecting to Faith’

A NYT Op-Ed column pointed me to a study released by the Pew Forum entitled “Faith in Flux,” which reports that more people with non-religious upbringings are flocking to churches to fill their spiritual void rather than those with childhood indoctrination. The columnist writes:

So what was the reason for this flight of the unchurched to churches?

Did God appear in a bush? Did the grass look greener on the other side of the cross? Or was it a response to the social pressure of being nonreligious in a very Christian country?

None of those reasons topped the list. Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met. And the most-cited reason for settling on their current religion was that they simply enjoyed the services and style of worship.

For these newly converted, the nonreligious shtick didn’t stick. There was still a void, and communities of the faithful helped fill it. [...]

 

CT: ‘How to Shrink a Church’

The “strict-church thesis” is a bit far-fetched and grossly over-generalized. It certainly doesn’t take into consideration the sociological shifts that evangelical churches are facing today. From Christianitytoday.com:

We evangelicals have long chalked up our success to this “strict-church thesis.” People are leaving liberal, mainline churches, we say, because liberals have compromised the gospel, and people are flocking to evangelical churches precisely because we have remained true and firm in the faith.

But a new book — Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace, by Shayne Lee and Phillip Luke Sinitiere (NYU) — argues that the strict-church thesis does not hold water. The authors look at five mega-ministries in broader evangelicalism, movements led by Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, Brian McClaren, Paula White, and Rick Warren. They examine these ministries through a marketplace approach to American religion, which analyzes spiritual supply and demand, marketing techniques, religious needs, and so forth. [...]

 

Examiner: ‘Evangelicals are a Minority’

The Examiner has posted an editorial on why evangelicals must learn to think like a minority:

According to the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey, the percentage of self-identifying Christians has steadily declined for almost two decades, dropping 10 percent. During the same period, the percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation nearly doubled, rising to 15 percent.

Newsweek’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Jon Meacham gave a thoughtful, if predictable, response, writing of “The End of Christian America.” Yet the philosophy he attacks, that of the old-guard Religious Right, as seen in The Moral Majority, vanished 15 years ago in most evangelical circles.

The news here is not that Evangelicals must recognize their Winthropian vision of “A City on a Hill” as a pipe dream. Ask your average evangelical if they want to see a Christian takeover of government and an implementation of “Christian laws” and you are likely to hear laughter.

No. The news stirring the collective evangelical consciousness is that they must assume a new mindset in the public square. Americans’ religious beliefs are becoming more polarized, and without “minority thinking” Evangelicals may lose many of the freedoms they cherish.

The article is not bashing evangelicals–well, not entirely. Towards the end, the writer sees the challenge ahead for evangelicals:

The real lesson, the big picture, is that America is rapidly losing a shared frame of reference, and Evangelicals must think ahead. They must see through the secular stereotype of Evangelicals behind all the levers of power and view themselves as a minority that they might ensure religious freedom for all.

 

CT: ‘The Real Prosperity Gospel’

From Christianity Today:

It is not just those enamored with the prosperity gospel who have pursued health, wealth, and happiness as if they were divine rights and signs of God’s blessing. Or who have avoided adversity and poverty as if they were curses. But God’s ways are more mysterious than we perceive.

God so governs the universe by his secret providence that while nothing happens apart from God’s decree, his hand remains largely hidden from us. What could be more natural than the changing seasons? Yet there remains such unevenness and diversity that every year, month, and day is seen to be governed by a new providence of God…

God’s sovereign rule cannot be separated from his saving purpose. The providence of God watches for our salvation, even when it most seems to sleep. Just as we find God in the “low places” of this world—a dirty feeding trough in Bethlehem, weary on the road to Jerusalem, and crying out in dereliction on the cross—we trust that he is most present in our lives precisely where he seems most hidden. It makes a tremendous difference in our lives when we trust that the same God who wounds also heals. [...]

 

Twitter’s Presence Fading

“Twitter is a Fad,” says BusinessWeek.com:

Like you really needed me to tell you this? Yes, you can follow me and several of my BusinessWeek colleagues on Twitter. And I’ll be the first to say that I like Twitter — it’s fun and useful finding out what friends, coworkers, and industry big-shots are reading and thinking. I also like hearing about how marketers are leveraging the technology, and it’s amusing to follow celebrities.

But Twitter is still a fad, and according to a study out today, it looks like it’s popularity may soon fade. Conducted by Nielsen Online, it focuses on “Twitter Quitters,” people who start a Twitter account but then fail to return the next month. Twitter, the study points out, has a very low retention rate, just 40%. Unless it figures out how to get more people to stick around, that means Twitter won’t ever achieve sizable reach online. “There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point,” writes David Martin, VP of Primary Research at Nielsen Online. With its current retention rate, Martin calculates the service could never reach more than 10% of the Internet population, even in a best-case scenario. [...]

 

Reasons Why People Leave the Church

Just gradually drifted away from the religion.

Stopped believing in the religion’s teachings. 

Spiritual needs not being met.

Unhappy with teachings about the Bible.

Those are some of the top reasons why those raised Protestant leave the church, according a survey on the Pew Forum (ThinkChristian.net). There is also a graph displaying the data.

HT: Z

 

NYTimes Update on the Swine Flu

According to this NYTimes.com article, 7 countries are affected by the swine flu, and there have been 152 deaths, but only in Mexico so far:

Two new swine flu cases were confirmed in Israel and as many as 11 in New Zealand, bringing the number of countries with confirmed cases to at least seven on Tuesday. But all, with the exception of Mexico, said the patients were recovering or had been hospitalized with only mild symptoms, leaving health officials struggling to determine why the disease has killed only in Mexico.

Twenty fatalities have been confirmed in Mexico, and the number of deaths considered likely to have been caused by the flu rose to 152, up from 149 on Monday, according to Mexico’s health minister. The number of people believed to be infected surpassed 1,600. [...]

 

DFW: Competitive in Global Trade

I never knew Dallas-Fort Worth had such international presence. From DallasNews.com:

When talk turns to global competition, Dallas-Fort Worth usually isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Tokyo, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.

But look out, Chicago, we’re gaining on you. And Los Angeles, don’t get too comfy in the sixth spot, either.

The reason for our optimism is a just-released Dallas Regional Chamber study that ranks the D-FW metropolitan area 10th, just behind Chicago and ahead of Houston, among the world’s most globally competitive cities. Of the 21 metro areas ranked on talent, business climate, resources, access and quality of life, ours was one of only five regions to score well in each category. [...]