Gospel.com Blog

What does your internet ministry look like… and is it as effective as it could be? If you’re a church, ministry, or individual struggling to make the transition from simply having an online presence to doing meaningful online ministry, here’s a piece of exciting news: the Internet Ministry Conference is back!

The Internet Ministry Conference (IMC) was once the cornerstone of the now-defunct Gospelcom Ministry Alliance. Attendees, ranging from lone bloggers to the leaders of global Christian organizations, all gathered for one purpose: to learn how to more effectively use the internet to carry out their Christian calling. Today, that means more than just learning how to set up a good website—it also means making good use of social media, mobile devices, and other online tools to reach your audience.

The last IMC was way back in 2008… and so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that Reconnect Productions is re-launching the Internet Ministry Conference this fall! IMC 2010 takes place on October 26-27 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and registration is now open.

Speakers lined up for the conference so far include social media guru Dan Zarrella and online ministry expert Kent Shaffer. You can read more about the speakers and other conference-related news at the IMC blog.

Early-bird registration is still available but won’t last forever, so if you’re interested in two days of internet ministry training and networking, take a moment to see if IMC 2010 is a good fit for you.

Update: the Internet Ministry Conference Twitter feed is the best source of news and updates about the conference.

Blaine Smith of Nehemiah Notes writes in a recent article about the principal of inspirational dissatisfaction. Inspirational dissatisfaction is when your frustration with a situation serves as the impetus for you to make a positive change to your life.

Smith offers an example from his own life of how inspirational dissatisfaction lead him to a revelation about his own life. He worked as a pastor for a few years in the 70s, and while he liked some parts of the job, he was dissatisfied with the requirement of pastors to dabble in so many different skills. He found that he would much rather focus on improving a few skills, and that lead him to become a “resource pastor,” a role in which he feels much more satisfaction. However, without having had that dissatisfying experience, he would have never had that insight into his personality.

The following is a brief excerpt from “Welcome Guidance from Unwelcome Circumstances” that describes how God uses inspirational dissatisfaction to teach us and guide us:

Inspirational dissatisfaction … is the positive role that our experiences of frustration play—both in helping us understand important steps we should take with our life, and in finding the motivation to take them. We may be unhappy in our job, for instance, because the work doesn’t fit us well, or because coworkers are not supportive or have unreasonable expectations of us. Frustration can be our ally in such cases—a red-alert that we need to seek a change.

I love this concept, as simple as it is, for it provides us a basis for seeing a silver lining in adverse circumstances, which we can easily miss. Some Christians view all frustrating situations fatalistically and hopelessly. They assume that God is punishing them through these circumstances and that they shouldn’t strive to change them.

On a more healthy level, we may recognize how such situations help us grow, but we assume the silver lining comes only if we stay in them and allow God to stretch us there. That conclusion is often justified, and we can be too quick to run away from challenges, to say the least. Yet Scripture gives about equal weight to the other possibility—that God may use our frustration in such cases to enlighten us to the fact that we’re not where we should be. Healthy thinking requires that we give fair consideration to both possibilities, and feel permission to think in both directions.

Unfortunately, our Christian teaching usually gives far more attention to the former possibility than the latter. We also have elaborate vocabulary for talking about the one (“pick up your cross,” “accept your lot,” “be a living sacrifice,” “lose your life in order to find it”), and little in the way of convenient language to speak of the possibility that an unwelcome situation simply isn’t right for us.

“Inspirational dissatisfaction” fills this gap wonderfully well and can make a redemptive contribution to our Christian vocabulary. We shouldn’t underestimate the role that language plays in our ability to reason effectively and make sound decisions, given the extraordinary level of “self-talk” that we engage in constantly. I agonized over the question of whether to leave conventional church work for a specialized ministry far more than I should have, due especially to guilt-ridden self-talk. Simply knowing it was permissible to think in terms of inspirational dissatisfaction, and having that term available, would have made a big difference.

Read the rest of the article at nehemiahministires.com.

Are you currently in frustrating or dissatisfying situation? What do you think God might be trying to tell you through that situation? Have you ever experienced inspirational dissatisfaction?

One Biblical concept that I, and I suspect many Americans like me, have trouble relating to is the yearning for a homeland that is so vividly expressed in the book of Lamentations and other Old Testament texts. The calamitous destruction of the nations of Israel and Judah had a profound effect on generations of Biblical writers, and influenced the Jews’ hopes and expectations regarding the promised Messiah.

There are populations and ethnic groups today that can relate to this fervent longing better than I, a middle-class Midwestern American, can hope to. In this Slice of Infinity devotional, Jill Carattini discusses one such people group, and what this sense of “homelessness” means to us as Christians:

Such intensity in the name of place and homeland is not unique to [Native Americans]. For the people of ancient Israel, the relationship between land and faith was equally profound. The destructive loss of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. was infinitely more to them than the loss of home and property. For them it was the loss of faith, identity, even God Himself. Walter Brueggemann writes of Jerusalem’s destruction: “The deep sense of displacement evoked by the loss led to the conclusion in some quarters that all the old promises of YHWH to Israel–and consequently Israel’s status as YHWH’s people and Jerusalem’s status as YHWH’s city–were placed in deep jeopardy.” [...]

The writer of Lamentations gives voice to the uncertainty of exile, the finality of a destroyed Jerusalem, and the death of home in the deepest sense. He also dares give voice in the midst of exile to the promise of restoration–in the assurance of coming home to the one who never left. No matter the place of loss, wandering, or exile, no matter the distance, no matter the depth, the arm of God is not too short to save.

Is this sense of “homelessness,” this longing for a homeland (either spiritual or physical), something you can relate to? How has that affected your Christian walk?

If we’re not careful we can find ourselves just going through the motions when it comes to our relationship with God. We might say the right words and do the right things, but if the focus of our heart isn’t on God we’re selling our relationship with Him short.

In this devotional written by Julie Ackerman for Our Daily Bread gives us a perfect example of how it’s possible to be emotionally far away from a situation even while we’re physically present:

Everything was quiet in our yard. While I worked at the patio table, our dog, Maggie, lay nearby in the grass. A slight rustling of dry leaves changed everything. Maggie made her move, and suddenly she was circling a tree, where a woodchuck clung tightly to the trunk.

Maggie came when I called, but I couldn’t get her to look at me. Her neck was in a rigidly fixed position. Although she was near me physically, her thoughts and desires were with that woodchuck.

Maggie and the woodchuck remind me of how quickly I become preoccupied with things that take my eyes off Jesus. Old temptations, new responsibilities, or ongoing desires for possessions or pleasure can quickly divert my attention from the One who knows and wants what is best for me.

A similar spiritual condition afflicted the Pharisees (Matt. 15:8-9). They were serving in the temple and instructing others, but their hearts were far from God.

We too can teach and serve at church but be far from God. Even our religious activity becomes meaningless when our focus is not on Jesus. But if we stop being “stiff-necked” (Acts 7:51), the Lord can turn our eyes away from worthless things and revive our hearts.

Have you ever found yourself not fully present when you’re supposed to be spending time with God? How do you refocus?

One of the paradoxes of Christianity is that, while our faith is centered around sharing Christlike love and peace, our private spiritual lives are vividly likened to a battleground. Warfare and battle are apt metaphors for our constant struggle to resist temptation and remain committed to the principles of the Bible.

What does this “spiritual war” look like in our lives, and how does it manifest? More importantly, how do we make sure we win this war? In a short devotional essay on spiritual war, Al Menconi explains where this spiritual warfare takes place… and lays out a battle plan for victory. Menconi believes that our minds are the ground zero of this spiritual war, and that we’re particularly vulnerable to spiritual attacks that come at us through the entertainment we absorb:

Instead of Satan announcing that he is our enemy and warning us that he wants to undermine our spiritual life, he has convinced us he is our friend and he simply wants to entertain us. And we deserve to be entertained….

I believe that this is a major reason why so many Christians are struggling with their spiritual life. We have allowed our minds to be “conformed to the values of this world” (Rom. 12:1) without even realizing it. Things that once were considered offensive, now entertain us.

If this is true, shouldn’t churches take a stronger role in educating believers on how to fight in this spiritual battle for our minds? Most churches and parents want to avoid the entertainment issue entirely. But we can’t. It is all around us! It shapes our world, but it doesn’t have to shape us!

Does this ring true to you? What sort of entertainment fills your idle time—and is it entertainment that conforms you to the mind of Christ, or to the values of the world around us? How have you and your family approached the difficult task of discerning between entertainment options?

Do you find it easy or hard to care for those who are hurting in the Church?

One of the more intriguing and challenging aspects of Christianity to me is the command to sacrificially care for one another. Jesus taught us that humble service was man’s greatest calling, and that to be considered “first” we must do our best to be “last.”

This devotional from Today in the Word reminds us that in the body of Christ we must look for those who are hurting and meet their needs, especially when it comes to helping the weakest of our members:

As the church of God, we must compassionately identify with those among us who hurt. Moreover, when members of our body are honored, we celebrate together. This isn’t mere sympathy or polite applause. With the kind of a radical unity in the body of Christ that Paul has been urging, we actually feel for one another. As followers of Jesus, we become like Him and take on each other’s pain and celebration in an incarnational way. In Christ, our stories and our lives really matter to others.

We can see what Paul is doing as he answers the questions the Corinthians have posed to him on the subject of spiritual gifts. He’s using his answer as an occasion to retrace some of his themes of the letter. We must remember that the fundamental problem the Corinthian church faced was its disunity. The disunity has expressed itself in multiple ways: believers had taken one another to court, the community had divided over the issue of whether one can eat meat sacrificed to idols, factions developed between sexual immorality and sexual asceticism, and the Lord’s Supper had become another occasion of the rich shaming the poor. Spiritual gifts were another arena where the Corinthians had despised one another.

Paul teaches that every member of the body is indispensable. We cannot do without what might seem to be the weakest of our members. As infinitely complex and beautiful as the human body, the diversity of the church is there by God’s creative design.

Read the entire devotional at todayintheword.com.

Have you witnessed an example of one member of the body of Christ caring for another recently? What are some practical steps you can take to care for those who are hurting?

Sharing the Christian faith is a daunting task; it’s easy to say the right evangelistic words, but it’s rare for most Christians to see those words take root in others. What’s wrong with our testimony? In this Insight for Leaders devotional, A.W. Tozer suggests a possible reason:

There is a large amount of ineffective Christian testimony among us today. Much of it is well-intended, I am sure—honest and sincere. We do the best we can with what we have. But our performance turns out to be something like that of the salesman promoting fountain pens. He tries to make a case for his product, but his would-be customers know he really thinks ballpoints are far more practical.

Too much of our Christian witnessing is unconvincing because we have not been convinced. We are ineffectual because we have not yet capitulated to the Lord from glory.

Does your Christian testimony feel weak and ineffectual? Is it possible that, instead of pouring more energy into perfecting your evangelistic strategies and tactics, you should make sure your own relationship with God is where it should be?

Out of Ur pointed out an interesting New York Times article a few weeks ago about how unhealthy our pastors are. The article in question states that Pastors are increasingly at risk to be fatter and sicker than the people in their congregation. Here’s an excerpt:

Public health experts who have led the studies caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and unhappy.

But while research continues, a growing number of health care experts and religious leaders have settled on one simple remedy that has long been a touchy subject with many clerics: taking more time off.

“We had a pastor in our study group who hadn’t taken a vacation in 18 years,” said Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, an assistant professor of health research at Duke University who directs one of the studies. “These people tend to be driven by a sense of a duty to God to answer every call for help from anybody, and they are virtually called upon all the time, 24/7.”

Read the rest of the NYT article.

I’ve sat through more than my fair share of sermons in which a pastor bragged about how they spent the first 5 years of their ministry tirelessly working for the church without a vacation. It always seemed odd to me that they would revel in the fact that they didn’t know how to properly rest, and it sounds like some of those bad habits are starting to have a significant impact on the health of pastors.

What do you think of the New York Times article? Does your church make it possible for your pastor to take time off? Do you think that being at an increased risk of health problems is just part of being a pastor?

Is it OK for churches to be hip?

“Hipster Christianity” has seen a lot of discussion since Brett McCracken published a scathing article about what he calls “‘wannabe cool’ Christianity”. McCracken identifies hipster Christianity as just another manifestation of the desire to “rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it ‘cool’.” What does that look like?

There are various ways that churches attempt to be cool. For some, it means trying to seem more culturally savvy. The pastor quotes Stephen Colbert or references Lady Gaga during his sermon, or a church sponsors a screening of the R-rated “No Country For Old Men.” For others, the emphasis is on looking cool, perhaps by giving the pastor a metrosexual makeover, with skinny jeans and an $80 haircut, or by insisting on trendy eco-friendly paper and helvetica-only fonts on all printed materials. Then there is the option of holding a worship service in a bar or nightclub (as is the case for L.A.’s Mosaic church, whose downtown location meets at a nightspot called Club Mayan).

“Wannabe cool” Christianity also manifests itself as an obsession with being on the technological cutting edge. Churches like Central Christian in Las Vegas and Liquid Church in New Brunswick, N.J., for example, have online church services where people can have a worship experience at an “iCampus.” Many other churches now encourage texting, Twitter and iPhone interaction with the pastor during their services.

But one of the most popular—and arguably most unseemly—methods of making Christianity hip is to make it shocking. What better way to appeal to younger generations than to push the envelope and go where no fundamentalist has gone before?

McCracken has also recently published a book on this topic, which is thoroughly reviewed at Religion Dispatches. McCracken’s book seems to present a more nuanced picture of “hipster Christianity” than his WSJ article: he distinguishes between authentic hipster churches that are born of sincere efforts to correct the Church’s course, and insincere churches that just pander to young people with a thin veneer of manufactured cool. The latter are just as phony as any stereotypical “old-school” church that turns up its nose at sinners and refuses to sing any song written after 1788.

It’s hard to know what to make of McCracken’s critiques. A lot of it is spot-on; every time I read an article about yet another provocatively-marketed sermon series about sex at yet another cooler-than-thou church, my eyes roll even farther back into my head. But at the same time, some of the criticism of hipster Christianity verges into the mean-spirited. We all recognize the danger of sacrificing genuine worshipfulness in the pursuit of cool; but it’s important to remember that the main alternative—traditional worship services “the way we’ve always done it”—carries its own risk of phoniness. Unless a hipster church’s “cool factor” actually pulls it away from orthodox Christianity and belief in Jesus Christ, I’m not inclined to criticize too harshly.

What do you think? Is “hipster Christianity” and its desire to make Christianity cool a dangerous trend that should be resisted? Is it a new generation just trying to avoid historical church pitfalls and worship Christ authentically?

Note: see also Molly Hemingway’s post on the topic at Ricochet.

I’ve been there. You have too. You’re stuck in a situation that has gone sour, without any obvious or easy solution. You just want out with the minimum amount of effort.

Call me a terrible person, but I don’t think I’m the only one who has tried to solve those problems by procrastinating.

The rub, as this devotional from Day by Day reminds us, is that we can never fully solve an issue by simply ignoring it until it goes away. Inappropriate solutions to our problems tend to lead us right back to those problems… oftentimes with added guilt. God wants better for us, and thankfully His Son came to show us a different way of handling difficult circumstances:

Most of us have run away from one thing or another. For many of us, this can be summed up in one word—procrastination. Procrastination is often a way to avoid that which we do not wish to deal with today, and an attempt to outrun it through every tomorrow. And as well as we know that it will one day catch up with us, and that it will probably catch up at a bad time, we continue trying to outrun whatever it is, until one day we find ourselves in desperate times, and falling back to desperate measures. [...]

Christ came to set us free from panic laden responses and desperate measure solutions. He desires to bring us peace in the midst of the storm, and quiet in the center of confusion. So where we might have once responded a certain way to our fears and trials, we now respond another. Whereas once we ran from a situation, we now draw near to God. Whereas once we would hold to the quickest way out, we now find the strength to ride it out and see it through to the end. And whereas once we would have responded with running through the list of solutions first, we now stand firm, seek God’s face and pray and spend time in the Word. For the best answers do not come from our anxious seeking, but in God’s movement in the stillness of our precious quiet times.

Are there any issues or relationships you’ve been procrastinating about? How has not resolving your issues hurt you spiritually or emotionally?