Gospel.com Blog

The Intersect Community provides training for church leaders. Recently, on their blog, Steve Argue wrote about the drinking age and how it relates to youth ministry in the United States.

Here’s an excerpt in which he writes about how the current drinking age has made a new way for people to transition between childhood and adulthood:

Historically, adolescences has shifted from a time of “transition” from child to adult, to a significant life stage that some experience well into one’s mid-twenties. There are many developmental and sociological reasons for this phenomenon.

It has been perpetuated, not the least, by youth ministry that has (on plus side) responded to the needs of this population but may also be (on the negative side) perpeduated a delayed entry into adulthood.

More broadly, it might be said that the road from childhood to adulthood has lost its way as adolescence is desired, worshiped, and longed to be preserved.

The lack of “signposts” toward adulthood have left gaps for other rites to be adapted. I wonder if the 21 year-old drinking age has become one of these rites. Maybe this rite has had to take on a flood of meaning that, on the surface, shows itself as binge drinking, but underneath calls for something more.

Hop on over to enter into the discussion on this topic.

Have you ever wondered what kind of thought and planning goes into choosing the songs you sing (and sometimes play) in a worship service? If you’re a worship leader, do you have a solid, Biblical system for thinking through and choosing music pieces that fit each church service?

The process of selecting worship music will be different for each individual congregation and worship style, of course. But to help you think through your music choices, FarsiPraise has collected some thoughts on the matter from a variety of church and worship leaders (both are in PDF):

• An essay by Paul Oakley (of the Church of Christ the King in Brighton, England) that walks through seven steps for considering and choosing worship music.
• A second collection of short mini-essays by seven other church leaders explaining how they choose music for their churches.

If you’re a church leader struggling to pick the right music, these thoughts from other leaders might help. And if you’re a congregation member who’s always wondered who chose the music and why, they might give you some insight into an important part of weekly worship planning!

What causes a church to grow? And if your church or ministry is considering “planting” a new church, what will cause it to take root and flourish?

Those are big questions, and the answer certainly involves a lot of prayer, strategic planning, and wise leadership. But on a more fundamental level, there is a critical relationship between church growth and the Bible. An article at the Lausanne World Pulse argues that whether you’re a church worker or a missionary, it’s important to understand that there is a strong relationship between church growth and the Bible:

To plant or grow a congregation, two basic things must repeatedly occur: people must come to know Jesus and they must become members of his body. The first step can happen in an evangelistic instant. It is the miracle of faith born during a gospel presentation. What follows is most effectively accomplished through an intentional program of Bible study. House churches, cell groups and small groups are used to incorporate new believers. At the center of each one is a time of Bible study.

The article goes on to list seven specific ways that a program of Bible study strengthens a church and helps it expand. Certainly something to keep in mind—the questions of logistics, money, and leadership are all of obvious importance in growing or planting a church, but at the heart of your church’s success lies the Bible, and the willingness of your church to delve into it.

This week at Gospel.com, we’re asking an important question: what does it mean to be part of the church, the body of Christ?

The Bible makes it clear that interaction with other believers is an important part of the life of a Christ-follower. While you could certainly follow Christ in isolation from other believers, our effectiveness as Christians increases when we work with one another. “Let us not give up meeting together,” we read in Hebrews; and elsewhere the community of Christ-followers is described as a body composed of many individual parts: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.”

So what exactly is a church, and what is it meant to accomplish? That’s a question we’ll be exploring at more length as the week goes on. But two articles by Richard Krejcir provide a good place to start the discussion. First up is What Your Church Can Look Like, which asks: what would an ideal, healthy, Biblical church look like, and what would it do?

What would your church look like if you took away the pastor(s), the music and worship, the buildings, the favored programs, the sacraments and ceremonies, as well as the events and Sunday School? What would you have left? The answer of what is left is what impacts and what resounds in your church, and is where your church’s health lies. Because doing church is not about the pastor, the observances, or the programs. It is about how we come to know and grow in Christ, connect with one another, and serve Him, both inside and outside of the church walls.

A church, then, is about helping its members worship God, grow in the faith, and serve Christ in their homes and communities. Is your church doing a good job of that, when you strip away all of its outward trappings? Krejcir goes into much more detail in a longer followup article, The Twelve Characteristics of the Healthy Church—it’s a lot to take in at first glance, but it’s well worth your time to walk through each of the twelve characteristics Krejcir lays out and ask how your church does (or doesn’t) embody them. And tune in later this week as we point to more articles about the church!

Is your church youth-friendly?

Most church members would probably answer “yes”—a typical church has some sort of youth ministry program and probably a few mission trips or other events for students to participate in. But beyond the presence of those programs, does your congregation do a good job of welcoming young people and students into the full body of the church?

An article at Legacy Youth Ministry Resources by Steve Miller looks at a recent study that asked 10,000 students to rate the ten factors that most influence their commitment to church. The results are worth considering and not always what you’d expect—high-tech entertaining worship and music rank much lower on the list than compelling teaching and good old-fashioned quality relationships with the pastor and other church leaders.

Next up is an essay at StudentSoul.org about helping students get to church—there’s a lot your church can do to help students physically get to church, and once they’re there, to help them get connected to what your ministry is all about.

Take a look through these articles and ask yourself how your church would rate against these criteria. And if you want to do a bit more reading on the topic, see Youth Ministry Exchange’s review of Choosing Church: What Makes a Difference to Teens, a book that delves much more deeply into the question of “what attracts young people to a church?”