Gospel.com Blog

Much has been written about church websites (good and bad) and the different ways that Christian organizations do ministry online. What level of internet presence does your church have? A simple website? An elaborate web presence that makes use of Twitter, Facebook, and other trendy tools?

And whatever your church’s level of internet engagement, is it serving the church effectively?

Share your thoughts!

Last year I saw a chunk of the Berlin Wall at a museum, it was a profoundly ugly chunk of concrete and I cannot imagine being separated from family and friends by it. I was far too young to register the significance of the wall coming down when I was younger, but the twenty year anniversary has given me a good chance to retroactively be in awe of what it meant for Germany and the world.

Christianity Today has an interview with a German pastor that gives some insight into what the Wall meant and how it’s still affecting life today.

Here’s an excerpt:

What can Christians take away from the fall of the Berlin Wall?

It’s a shame that we still have an invisible wall. People who are extremely left wing or extremely conservative in their political stance never meet at the same table or shake hands.

What did really unite the first churches? It was not a shared cultural background, as some were Jews and others Gentiles of many different kinds. It was not a fully shared set of rules and regulations, as Jewish believers followed some very different rules than Gentile believers, and as Paul rules out the law as a foundation in Ephesians 2:15. But it is also not the “multicultural” approach that is popular today in the political and public arena where everything is being held together by an unquestionable respect for the differences of the other. In the early church there was much questioning, admonishing, and discussing, theologically as well as ethically, about the right and just way.

The church creates this amazing opportunity; in the church people can come together that would otherwise never sit together: people from the political right and left, people having very different attitudes about sex, power, and money, people who suffered from communists and people who were communists, the “environmentalist” and liberal “capitalist,” people with Jewish backgrounds and others with German, Arab, or other backgrounds. Not by simply tolerating each other and leaving each other untouched, but by welcoming each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and then the joined struggle begins. What truly unites us is the shared confession of Christ and a life-long struggle with each other and with God to find a biblical way for life and work.

What about you? Do you remember when the wall came down? Did it mean anything to you and your faith?

Earlier this month, Out of Ur hosted an interesting conversation about the advantages and drawbacks of “internet campuses” for churches. (When you read the post, be sure to check out the excellent discussion in the comments as well.) But what really caught my attention this week was Bob Hyatt’s post arguing that there is no such thing as a virtual church.

Hyatt’s point is a compelling one, and puts words to the vague unease that many Christians (even the most tech-savvy ones!) have about the role of online churches and worship communities. Hyatt’s argument is that while an online church community can reproduce many of the things that define a true church, they simply cannot replicate the low-key but critical face-to-face interaction from which real, everyday Christian ministry springs.

At an online church, Hyatt argues, you’ll never hear Bob Churchgoer gripe about his difficult work week, or Jane Choirmember recount her ongoing struggle with migraines. And without those little interactions, we’d miss out on countless small opportunities to serve others and meet their needs (maybe inviting Bob out for coffee to relax, or volunteering to watch Jane’s kid next time a migraine knocks her out of commission.)

I almost agree with Hyatt… almost.

At this point in my life, online church isn’t for me, for many of the reasons Hyatt describes. I think Hyatt would be correct if he were arguing that few or no online churches active right now can replicate the intimate fellowship that happens in a face-to-face church, with all the Christian encouragement and ministry that spring out of such things.

But I’m not comfortable saying that online church can never meet those needs. I don’t know about you, but I’ve encountered plenty of online forums—not even Christian or church-related ones–where people share the same everyday gripes, praises, and pleas that they would in a face-to-face environment. This might be an indictment of my poor socialization at church, but I actually learn as much about prayer needs and praise reports through Facebook as I do from the post-service cookies-and-coffee break where most congregational chatting takes place.

There are many things an online community would have to do to (some of them quite difficult) to create an environment of authentic fellowship, but I don’t see any reason why it’s impossible. I can think of several reasons why it could actually be a good idea—for one thing, you can’t have been on the internet at any point in the last ten years and failed to notice that people tend to open up online about their ideas, opinions, and problems in ways that they might rarely do face-to-face.

So while I sympathize with much of Hyatt’s concerns, I’m a little unsure whence comes his insistence that virtual church is a complete spiritual dead-end. A follow-up post is promised, so I’ll be watching Out of Ur to see where he leads the conversation. What do you think? Have you experienced genuine church worship and fellowship online?

[image from flickr user shadysidelantern]

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. —Acts 8:1-4

Persecution is nothing new to the church—the above passage describes a campaign of persecution launched in the earliest days of the Christian church. Persecution of the church (sometimes even at the hands of fellow Christians) of some sort has been present in every century since Jesus’ time. And it’s a reality today, even if those of us living in relatively free Western societies find it hard to believe.

There are several ministries in the Gospel.com community that focus on the plight of the persecuted church around the world. Perhaps most prominent is the Lausanne World Pulse newsletter, which has some excellent articles describing the state of the persecuted church today:

• Lessons from the Persecuted Church, which lists five important things we can learn from the existence of persecution—and which suggests that persecution should not be seen as an abnormal part of the Christian walk.
• Essays about the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, Indonesia, North Korea, and elsewhere.

Perhaps the most well-known instance of persecution took place under the Roman Empire in the early centuries of the church. For a good rundown of that era of persecution, this transcript from Christian History Institute goes over the basic history.

Over at Sermon Index you can find a classic George Whitefield sermon exhorting Christians to hold firm under persecution, whatever form it takes. Also at that site is the inspiring story of John Cennick, who suffered greatly for his faith.

There are many other resources on the topic of the persecuted church within the Gospel.com community; if you’ve checked out the above links and want more, see the Persecuted Church page.

Are you a pastor or church leader looking for a bit of inspiration to start off your Monday? The Online Pulpit is a semi-regular column that shares thoughts from working pastors, covering a wide range of topics relevant to church leaders.

The most recent column is about a serious topic, but one that pastors are called to address frequently in the course of their ministry: death and mortality. Gerry Koning uses an unusual metaphor to paint the human journey through life and death in a new light, casting the process of life not just as a morbid approach to death, but as a unique journey back toward our true spiritual home with God. If you’re a pastor who deals with this issue often, it might help you to comfort people grieving the loss of a loved one, or facing death themselves.

If that’s too heavy a topic for a Monday morning, there are plenty more columns to explore in the Online Pulpit archives, which go all the way back to 1995. For starters, you might take a look at The iPodization of Our Culture, about our increasing tendency to focus inward on ourselves; Ministry or Management?, which addresses the delicate balance between “running a church” and shepherding a congregation; or The Church in Exile, about how to address the church’s slide into cultural and intellectual exile from the world.

With over 700 missionaries in 50 different countries, BCM international is working each day to “reach children and develop churches worldwide.”

BCM is a global Bible-Centered Ministry dedicated to making disciples of all age groups for the Lord Jesus Christ through evangelism, teaching and training so that churches are established and The Church strengthened.

We minister through evangelism, church planting, discipleship, leadership training and publishing Bible curriculum and teaching materials. We also provide Bible Clubs, camping, counseling, and compassionate care. BCM strives to make an impact in the world through Reaching Children and Developing Churches Worldwide.

If you’re interested in getting to know their ministry, you might read the article titled The Faces of BCM International in their May newsletter.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

In India last June, a BCM India missionary/pastor was beaten, head shaved (a gesture of contempt in the culture), then dumped in the river for dead. Miraculously rescued, he was evacuated to the BCM Hyderabad Center where he and his family were offered sanctuary as he recovered from his injuries. When I visited with him a month later, he was already preparing to go back to continue sharing the gospel.

What does your church’s online presence look like? Hopefully your church has a website, at least—and hopefully it’s one that communicates your church’s message clearly, and not a website that looks like it belongs in the past decade. But even if your church’s website needs some serious help (and even a well-designed church site needs periodic review and updates), here are a few tools to help you, all from the Internet Evangelism Day website.

• First up is a very thorough 55-question church website quiz you can take to find out how your church website is doing. The quiz isn’t meant to be a list of set-in-stone guidelines—you might disagree with a few items, or some of them might not apply to your church’s site—but walking through this quiz is a great way to make sure you’re thinking about all the right questions. Notice that plenty of the questions are strategic rather than technical; these are questions to talk through with your entire church leadership, not just with the person who designed/is designing your site.
• A good follow-up to the quiz is IED’s list of 70+ tips for effective church websites. Lots of good discussion-starters, covering both technical and strategic aspects.
• It’s important to get your church’s website working effectively for your ministry. But it would be a mistake to assume that just having a website covers all of the necessary bases of your internet presence—what about social networking, blogging, and mobile devices? The IED site has a good overview of how to incorporate social networking sites like Facebook into your church’s ministry, as well as corresponding pages on ministry blogging and mobile devices.

Don’t let your church settle for an ineffective online presence—read through these resources and see what you can apply to your church’s website and internet ministry.

While you may not find it interesting, one of the realities of doing church in the United States is the need to have some sort of administrative staff. Sometimes it falls to the Pastor, but if you’re lucky there’s a designated person for the job. If you happen to be in one of these church administration positions you know that it’s not exactly a piece of cake keeping all the legal, tax and money stuff straight and accounted for. And the last time you want to be asking questions like, “Does that income fall under Unrelated Business Income Tax?” is not when the IRS is asking the same thing.

Church Law & Tax Report “exists to provide church leaders, staff members, and volunteer workers with extensive legal, tax, and risk management resources and training at an affordable price.” They offer extremely practical advice and articles on everything from tax status to church safety. It is a pay site, but the resources are extensive.

Check out a few sample articles:

Negligent Supervision Part 2

Preparing For The Unthinkable: Violence in the Church

The Unrelated Business Income Tax and Publishing

How should a church treasurer respond to a donor who demands a refund?

And here’s some more about the services they offer.

Has your church ever asked the question, “Are we being sensitive to the single people in our congregation?” If you haven’t, it’s time to examine why. Especially if your leadership consists of married people.

Navpress has a quick quiz you can take to see if your church is being friendly towards single people or not. Here’s a few sample questions:

Many sermon illustrations, examples, and applications apply to unmarried adults as well as couples (e.g., “Ask your spouse or roommate … “).
…
Your pastor has preached on the biblical view of singleness.
…
The proportion of single adults in your congregation is approximately the same as in your community (45 percent for the United States as a whole, higher in urban areas, lower in rural areas).

Up until this week I had no idea about that last statistic.

If your serious about reaching out to singles, jump over and take the quiz.

So what exactly does the bible say about singleness? Should everybody yearn to be married? At times in the church it might seem like the answer to the latter question is a resounding, “Of course!” But, of course, it’s not that simple.

In fact according to Albert Hsu from the Discipleship Journal, in the United States the increasing percentage of single people is a relatively new phenomenon:

At the beginning of the 20th century, about 95 percent of the adult population in America was married. Life expectancy in 1900 was only 47 years, and most people married in their teens. Divorce was nearly unheard of, and those who were widowed remarried quickly. So for the most part, being an adult was synonymous with being married. Being single was by far the exception. As a result, most churches spent most of their time and resources ministering to the needs of married couples and families.

At this end of the century, however, the landscape is quite different. Now nearly half of the adult population is unmarried. About 45 percent of today’s adults have never married or are divorced, widowed, or separated. One in four adults has never married. People are staying single longer, no-fault divorce laws are available in every state, and rising life expectancies mean that widows and widowers often remain unmarried longer after the death of a spouse. Now, singleness is almost as likely to be the current status for American adults as marriage.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:7-8 talks about his own singleness as a gift:

I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.

It’s always interesting to note that Jesus and his direct followers remained single their entire lives; a tradition which has continued in the clergy of some of the Church today. Luckily, churches are increasingly ministering to the single people in their congregation.

And this PDF titled, Singleness: The Misunderstood World of Single Adults from RBC talks talks about singleness in the church.

Again here’s Albert Hsu:

Today we need to rediscover the balance of valuing both marrieds and singles. Some of the greatest leaders of church history lived their whole lives as singles: Saint Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, Thomas À Kempis, Bernard of Clairvaux. More recently, Protestant leaders such as Methodist circuit rider Francis Asbury, missionaries Amy Carmichael and Helen Roseveare, and German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer were all single. C. S. Lewis was a bachelor for most of his life, married at age 57, was married for only four years, and remained a celibate widower after his wife’s death. British theologian John Stott, now in his 70s and never married, has had a significant worldwide ministry. Mother Teresa spent seven decades serving the poor in India as a single woman.

A truly Christian view of singleness and marriage will honor both without disparaging one or the other.