I had the privelage to hear Voddie Baucham speak at a worship conference that I went to in high school. This morning I heard that Voddie was speaking on “The Call to Discipleship” on a radio station and what he said was so unique that I thought I should share it with everyone. If you are a podcast listener you can subscribe to the Family Life Today podcast at:
http://rss.streamos.com/streamos/rss/genfeed.php?feedid=253&groupname=familylife or directly find it though FLT’s website familylife.com
Voddie’s church does not have a youth group. He says that their church is challenging fathers to be the pastor of their home. Rather than sending their children off to be taught and pastored by someone else, they expect the father’s to pastor their house. He says that they’re beginning to see strong famlies, strong marriages, and men who are stepping up to be the spiritual leader in their household. They’ve started a new church last April based on this family driven principle and they’re already up to 200-300 people in their services and are looking at starting another church plant. He says that people are tired, and even afraid, to send their children to youth groups. In churches it’s expected that youth get sent way to youth group, and parents don’t like what they see…. this is why the church has grown so fast.
The odd thing is that Voddie’s idea of “Family Driven Faith” is revolutionary. “Family Driven Faith” seems to have more biblical support than “youth groups” and many of the other programs that our churches seem to come up with. (more…)
A couple days ago, I was driving while listening to a local Christian radio station. A commercial came on and they were urging their audience to casually bring Jesus up in all your conversations as a means to “introduce him to your friends.” Then I started to think about a witnessing conference that I went to while in the youth group. This conference pushed students to go up to complete strangers and ask, “Do you know where you’re going to go when you die?”
Before I continue, I feel the need to post a disclaimer. I am NOT by any means trying to discredit this type of witnessing, nor am I saying that this is improper or unbiblical. (more…)
I’m trying to figure out this culture and “get out of the box.” The church is no longer seen as relevant, and we are doing the same thing that we’ve been doing for decades… yet, the culture hasn’t been the same for decades. Lately I’ve been questioning if the “weekly worship service” is something that is a doctrinal truth or just a tradition that the church has had for years.
Check out what this church did for a week… some churches would throw a fit if the pastor wanted to do this… but I strongly believe this is the first step in the right direction.
Their use to be a day when churches needed a professional graphic design artist in order to make their promotion material, worship slides, and sermon slides look professional and current. CreativeMyK is by far the BEST resource I’ve found for churches wanting to give the graphics design aspect of their church a face lift.
Allow me to state that this isn’t strictly for the “graphic newbie church,” this is also an amazing resource for the church that already has a powerful graphics department. All the material can be download in the format that it was originally made (i.e. PhotoShop = .psd file etc). Check it out–it’s a trip that will not be wasted:
CreativeMyK
P.S. Another great resource for ideas and sometimes good photos for stock InterFaceLift.