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Let’s say a person became a Christian some time ago and just never got around to finding a church. They read still read their Bible and pray, but they’re not a member or even an active “visitor” of any organized body of Christ. Are they still a Christian?

Is Church attendance required to call yourself a Christian?

Here’s an answer from the ministry of Faith Facts:

Yes, at least in a very technical sense. Salvation is not dependent on actions. God judges one’s heart.

But let’s be honest. The Bible says that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). If you say you are a Christian yet do not attend church regularly, how can you say that you really love God sufficiently?

Jesus emphasized the importance of his church. The Bible further emphasizes that regular worship, Bible study, fellowship with other believers, and service to one another are important. Likewise, the Bible warns against willful and persistent rejection of God (Hebrews 10:26).

Read the rest of the article at I’m not into organized religion. Can’t I be a Christian without going to church regularly?.

What do you think?

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!

Is it appropriate for Christians to attend worship services for a different religion?

I think few Christians would object to the idea of learning about or reading up on another religion, but is there something special about a dedicated worship service that makes it spiritually unwise for Christians to attend? Is there a clearly identifiable line between attending such a service, and participating in the worship?

Share your thoughts!

How does your church react when a member of the congregation leaves?

Gordon Atkinson, longtime pastor (and blogger) has written a thoughtful essay describing the importance of gracefully listening to the “parting shots” of departing church members… even when what they say isn’t what you want to hear:

Most of the time when people leave our church, however, they just disappear. We notice their repeated absence after some weeks have passed. If I can track them down, they’ll often give me their parting shot, a short, abbreviated explanation of why they are leaving. These parting shots can be difficult to understand. Sometimes people are angry over a real or imagined slight. Some people cannot honestly address why they are leaving the church, so they convince themselves that they’re “just not being fed,” or they need a place with more music or better music or different preaching. Sometimes people just lie—they don’t want to admit that they’d rather attend a large church where no one notices when they sleep in on Sunday morning, so they point a finger at a theologically wayward Sunday school teacher, or at my sermons…

Being in the ministry requires us to develop a thick skin. We need to learn to spot the bull and let it go without wasting too much emotional energy on it. But we also need to cultivate the ability to hear what people are really saying by listening to what is behind their words. However painful it may be, we must listen to the parting shots of those who leave, because there is truth buried there—below the anger and the scapegoating and the general dishonesty. My advice is to ignore one person’s opinion of you or your ministry, and to watch for trends and patterns.

I imagine that’s much easier to say than to put into practice; it can’t be fun listening to people tell you that they dislike your preaching so much that they’re leaving the church. If you’re a pastor, I’d be interested to hear how you handle these “parting shots,” and if you’ve learned to dig beneath the words to discern what’s really being communicated.

But since I’m not a pastor, my interest in this topic is more in how I, as a typical churchgoer, should act when I feel called to leave a church. I’ve never left a church out of anger or theological dispute; it’s always been something more mundane, such as moving to a different city. But reading Atkinson’s article makes me regret that I have rarely sat down with the pastor or leadership of a church to explain what I’m doing and offer a (friendly and positive) parting shot. Many employers conduct exit interviews with employees who are leaving the company; surely there’s valuable information to be gained from an informal interview with a departing churchgoer.

Pastors, how do you respond when you learn that a church member is leaving the church? And fellow churchgoers, have you ever delivered a “parting shot” upon leaving a church, and how did it go?

Have you ever lived through the death of a church?

Since posting about photos of abandoned churches last week, “church death” has been on my mind. By chance, I came across a post at Mere Comments about church growth and church death:

To abbreviate a long and painful story, I joined the line of unsuccessful pastors, both liberal and conservative, who were not able to grow the church on the terms its traditions laid down—and at the end of the road it faced dissolution. [...]

I was reminded of this by a letter from someone sorrowfully anticipating the dissolution of her own congregation—a more “natural” death than mine died, for hers is not mortally diseased as mine was.  I think it’s just exhausted.  As a former pastor of a dying church, I feel quite strongly that such congregations should be allowed to die—that they, just like human beings, when they see the signs of impending death, need to take reasonable steps to dissolve in an orderly and peaceful way.  None should be assumed to last forever, and it may also be assumed that if God wanted them to keep going, he could easily and quickly supply the necessary resources, just as he could give any of us, if he chose, a greatly extended life span.  But as a rule he does not—in fact, he endorses happenings that lead us to death.  He expects us, when we are able, to make our preparations, and die well.

Does that resonate with you?

The default Christian advice to those facing adversity—whether in your personal spiritual life or in your church’s life—is to buckle down, keep the faith, and faithfully plug away in the hope that God will reward your persistence in the end. But is there a time in a church’s life when its failure to overcome the obstacles arrayed against it should be taken as a sign that it’s time to close it down and move on with our lives?

A friend of mine who is the pastor at a small local church recently went through a long and intense experience debating this question with his church. The church had, through a series of largely unavoidable spots of bad luck, experienced a major drop in membership and was faced with the question of whether or not it was worth continuing on with a greatly diminished community. After much prayer and debate, they decided not to call it quits just yet—but reaching that conclusion wasn’t simple or easy.

What about you? Have you experienced a church shutdown, and if so, was it graceful and prayerful… or was it characterized by denial? How do you tell the difference between obstacles that the church can and should work to overcome, and signs that it’s time to close down the church?

While seasonal flu happens every year, this year H1N1 (or Swine Flu) has been on everyone’s mind. It seems that everywhere you turn the entire nation is on high alert. Even churches are starting to take steps towards prevention.

In fact, the church I attended this past Sunday not only had the wine (well, grape juice) in separate cups, but the communion wafers were in separate cups as well. And the deacons who served us all washed their hands with the huge bottle of hand sanitizer sitting on the stage before they handed out elements out to us.

How has seasonal and swine flu affected your church?

What do you think?

Whether it’s a harvest festival, or a fall carnival, or a Haunted House-esque Judgement House, or something else entirely, many churches are making alternative Halloween activities available to their communities.

What about you? Does your church provide a Halloween alternative?

Share your thoughts!

Have you ever seen an abandoned church building?

At WebUrbanist, there’s a fascinating series of photos of abandoned church buildings, in varying states of decay and ranging from the strangely beautiful to the downright depressing. Here’s a sample:

I recently took a road trip through the American midwest and saw several abandoned-looking churches (although none as photogenic as these). I don’t believe that church buildings, simple or ornate, have any special quality of “holiness,” and so seeing these images isn’t a spiritual shock.

But they do raise questions, some of them a bit sad: what happened to the people who once worshipped here? Are they happily worshiping at another church today? What caused them to leave the church—was it theological disagreement, a slow decline in membership, collapse of the local economy? What was it like to worship in these churches for the last time?

Jeff Berryman has some poignant thoughts on these images:

Two hundred years from now, or four hundred—and I know it’s not the same for a thousand reasons—but imagine someone wandering through the ruins of the place where you worship, if you do.  What, they will wonder, went on here?  What happened?  How and why did such beauty get lost?

And of course, people are churches, many abandoned and worn down, the images of these abandoned rooms images of many spirits and souls.

What about you? Do you pass churches like these in your own town? How do these images make you feel?

Musical preferences are complicated and personal things. One person loves rock music, another classical, a third folk and a fourth hip-hop. And all of them might be sitting in the same pew!

Given these differences in musical preference, how should we use music in worship? Should we just standardize on one style of music and expect everyone to take part, or incorporate different styles into worship to connect with as many people as possible?

Speaking as an avid lover of music, I think that when we join a community, we need to learn to worship in the way that community worships. We need to uphold the parts of the body of Christ that are responsible for worshiping God through music, even when the style of music isn’t to our personal taste.

What about you? How do you handle the tension between your personal weekday preferences in music and what you sing on Sunday? Is it even an issue for you?

More importantly, what is it about music that connects you with God? Is it a certain style of music? Is it the words? Something else entirely? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Do you think the Church is as unhealthy as people say it is? There seems to be an increasing number of books and blog posts devoted to the failings of the Church. A recent Out of Ur post cites statistics that say that 70-80% of youth are leaving the church by the age of 22. If it was half that number, I’d still think it was an extremely high percentage.

In his most recent blog post, Dale Fincher reflects on negative statistics like those and asks some fantastic follow-up questions. He wonders if there’s something intrinsic to today’s church that repels so many people who follow Jesus.

Here’s a few paragraphs from his post:

We’ve all witnessed the onslaught of recent publishing. We’ve read the articles that speak to so many people leaving church. We’ve seen the books by people disillusioned with church. We’re heard the statistics decrying that most students won’t even attend church by the time they are out of college. Many leaders are fretting over the dropped attendance as an indication of the spiritual maturity of the Christian population.

What exactly is going on here? Why are people discouraged with church? What is church that it isn’t meeting people’s needs? What is it about church that seems to be missing the point?

I’ll extend the same question to you: is there something identifiably wrong with the Church that’s putting off Christians (and non-Christians)? Or is it all just a lot of people complaining about a problem that’s always existed, or doesn’t exist?