Series: Columns

Church & Ministry Church Growth

All Growth Matters

By Mark A. Taylor Since 1997 CHRISTIAN STANDARD has been publishing annual lists of megachurches among the Christian churches and churches of Christ. In those 19 years, the megachurch phenomenon has exploded, not only in this fellowship but across the whole evangelical world. And with the growth has come criticism, cynicism, and complaint. Two years ago I interviewed Jud Wilhite, Dave Stone, and Don Wilson for our Beyond the Standard program. Each of them led one of the largest megachurches on that year”s list. I still remember what I wrote about that experience. These three “shared practical ideas and thoughtful

April 13, 2016

Church & Ministry Leadership Development

Hacking Ministry

By Jim Tune One Saturday in November, hundreds of programmers and designers arrived at George Brown College in Toronto. They were armed with laptops and sleeping bags, although few of them would sleep. For 30 hours, they worked nonstop on creating products to improve the lives of people living with dementia, a disease that affects 47.5 million worldwide. Their reward: the opportunity to change lives, $175,000 in cash prizes, and the chance to pitch their ideas to influencers. DementiaHack is one of many hackathons taking place around the world. There are even Christian versions, like Code for the Kingdom, “where

April 12, 2016

Christian Standard Updates News & Updates

A Birthday Worth Celebrating

By Mark A. Taylor We had a party in the CHRISTIAN STANDARD office last week, and we took some pictures to share with visitors to our website. The occasion, as all our Facebook friends have already seen, was the 150th anniversary of CHRISTIAN STANDARD”s first issue, April 7, 1866. Peter Esposito, president of Christian Standard Media (formerly Standard Publishing) brought bagels and a birthday cake, and the whole office enjoyed the refreshments from a table displaying our framed copy of that very first edition. While each of our staff members has been helping produce CHRISTIAN STANDARD for several years, our

April 6, 2016

Church Leadership

Axioms for Leaders, Part 2

By Jim Tune In last week”s blog I posted an annotated list of five axioms for Christian leaders and promised five more for this week. I haven”t attempted to rank these axioms, as they are mostly situationally driven. They either apply to your current circumstance or they don”t. All of them have found application to my life and leadership””some of them very recently. Here are five more axioms for this week: 1. Become a lifelong learner. Read something. Harry S. Truman said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Rick Warren insists that the moment you stop

April 5, 2016

Christian Standard Updates News & Updates

Different but the Same

By Mark A. Taylor “CHRISTIAN STANDARD sure isn”t what it used to be.” The Facebook comment was meant as a critical jab, but it seems more like a compliment to me. With this issue, the magazine is 150 years old, and we”re proud of many ways it is different today than in the past. We have a more attractive format today. In its earliest years, CHRISTIAN STANDARD was a dense, type-heavy newspaper filled with doctrinal essays crafted from long sentences and complex thoughts. Today”s readers, bombarded by media at every turn, need something different””more graphics, more color, shorter articles, and

April 4, 2016

Culture & Public Square

Is Baseball Really Dead?

By Joe Boyd Some of my favorite family memories are the yearly trips into Cincinnati from my home in eastern Kentucky to watch the Reds play baseball. There”s nothing like walking into a Major League Baseball stadium for the first time, turning a corner, and seeing that vast green grass ocean spread before you. Baseball is a throwback to an older, slower time. There is no clock. Games play out at their own pace. Unlike other popular sports, losses are expected. A team can lose 80 games and still win the World Series. The season is a marathon, long like

March 31, 2016

Book Reviews Reviews

Empires, Philosophies, Biases, and Jesus

AUDIO BOOKS I, Claudius Robert Graves The Inexplicable Universe:Â Unsolved Mysteries Neil deGrasse Tyson History”s Greatest VoyagesÂ of Exploration Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius The HistoryÂ of Ancient Rome Garrett G. Fagan Will to Power:Â The PhilosophyÂ of Friedrich Nietzsche Robert C. SolomonÂ and Kathleen Higgins (narrators) TRADITIONAL BOOKS Blindspot: Hidden BiasesÂ of Good People Mahzarin Banaji & Anthony Greenwald New York: Delacorte Press, 2013 I Knew Jesus Before He WasÂ a Christian . . . and IÂ Liked Him Better Then Rubel Shelly Abilene: Leafwood Publishers, 2011 By LeRoy Lawson Heard a good book lately? I confessed in an earlier column that sometimes (regularly) I read with my ears,

March 30, 2016

Church Leadership

Axioms for Leaders, Part 1

By Jim Tune I”ve thought through ten axioms that are helpful for me as I try to lead others and myself responsibly. Here are five for this week, with five more to follow in next week”s blog: 1. It”s okay to ask for help. There are good people ready and willing to help you. You can”t do this job alone so get all the help you can. Ask for support and then be easy to support. 2. Make mistakes. Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them. Gretchin Rubin

March 29, 2016

After Easter: the Challenge Remains

By Mark A. Taylor Churches and church leaders around the world are breathing a collective sigh of relief this week. Easter is over. All the hard work anticipating big Easter attendances is finished. Larger numbers of volunteers were recruited. Worship services were added (some megachurches began Easter services on Thursday evening). Musicians practiced harder and longer; choirs and worship teams prepared their best. Preachers gave special effort to make sure their sermons were polished and ready. New churches and multisites launched on Easter Sunday, with the hope to attract newcomers on the one Sunday when tradition prods the largest

March 28, 2016

Church & Ministry Church Leadership Preaching

The Best Sermon I”ve Ever Heard (9)

By Arron Chambers Christian leaders, some of them preachers themselves, tell us about a sermon they can”t forget””and maybe you won”t either. Titus Benton Titus Benton is a student pastor at Current””A Christian Church in Katy, Texas, as well as the executive director of The 25 Group, a nonprofit he and his wife started in 2014. His life”s mission is to preach, write, and give for the glory of Jesus. And bacon. His life also revolves around bacon. Titus”s Best Sermon: The best sermon on sacrifice was by David Platt, preacher at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama.

March 27, 2016

New Testament Theology & Bible

Facing the Future

By Joe Boyd What did the resurrection mean to the readers of the oldest Gospel? And how does that help us in our own confusing lives and complicated age?Â Most followers of Jesus are aware that there are four Gospels in the Christian Scriptures: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All four of these accounts tell the story of Jesus, but, at times, from different perspectives. Most New Testament scholars agree that Mark”s Gospel is likely the oldest, dating a few decades after the life and death of Jesus. Looking at Mark”s story of the resurrection, one realizes it is brief

March 23, 2016

Ingenuity

By Jim Tune One of my favorite stories in the Bible is of the paralyzed man and his four friends. We aren”t told much about him, but we know he had four deeply compassionate friends who were determined to place him at the feet of Jesus (Mark 2:1-11). This man could do very little to help himself. He was completely dependent on others to feed him, bathe him, clothe him, and care for his other needs. Fortunately, the paralyzed man had friends who cared for him. Better yet, his friends also had initiative and ingenuity. They took him to the

March 22, 2016

Where Will God Use You Best?

By Mark A. Taylor “Do you believe you”re serving in the place God can use you best?” A friend surprised me with that question several years ago. And maybe I was equally surprised by my answer. “Yes,” I said. My guess is that many Christians, certainly many Christian leaders, are a lot like me. We think about that question too little. We choose ministries like a young professional plotting his next career move. How will this job position me to work later for the kind of church I really want to serve? Does it pay more than I”m earning now?

March 21, 2016

Church & Ministry Community Outreach

Putting Life Back in the Community

By Jennifer Johnson For more than 125 years, the house at 516 N. Wall Ave. in Joplin, MO, has reached local residents for Christ””as a private home, as the first campus of Ozark Christian College, and later as the home of North Joplin Christian Church. Today, this historic building continues to facilitate ministry as the Neighborhood Life House, a nonprofit organization that builds relationships with community members and shares the love of Jesus through a variety of programs for children and families. “A group of us at College Heights Christian Church had been working with a ministry to an apartment

March 20, 2016

Church Leadership

What Got You Here Won”t Get You There

By Tim Harlow There are some wonderful benefits to leading the same church for 26 years. It”s actually very difficult to make much headway into your community as a church leader without longevity. However, when people ask me for the hardest thing about longevity, this is my answer””what got us here doesn”t usually get us there. I don”t mind change. I don”t mind that I”ve preached through the years of overhead projectors to slide projectors to video to HD video. I don”t mind that I grew up in a church with a bus ministry and a puppet troupe, but I”m

March 16, 2016

Stewardship & Generosity

Don”t Worry about Wealth

By Jim Tune Back in 1966 the folk-rock duo Simon and Garfunkel released an album called Sounds of Silence. The album was a best-selling collection of reflective songs with contemplative lyrics. It has been preserved by the Library of Congress as a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” work of art. For that album, Paul Simon penned the words to a song about a much-admired philanthropist who was envied by all. “Richard Cory,” a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, was adapted by Simon into a song that ends with the startling news of the philanthropist committing suicide. My grandmother used to

March 15, 2016

Missing God

By Mark A. Taylor Being a soldier can be boring. Especially when you”re far from home, in a dry, dirty, dusty place. When the assignment is to keep order among a stubborn people who resent you and all you stand for, the duty is all the more distasteful. And so, when a strange peasant called a king is assigned to your watch, who could blame you for having a little fun? Nothing about him looks like royalty, that”s for sure. So you find some thorns and make him a crown. Your buddy has a robe he took from some unlucky

March 9, 2016

Soul Work Is Slow Work

By Jim Tune Paul Sparks, a cofounder of the Parish Collective, likes to refer to the reverse Prayer of Jabez. I find his twist on things refreshing: God, Shrink our territory, And narrow our boundaries That we might truly be a blessing to all. Yeah. Like that would be a best seller or catalyze a 40-day program for the typical Evangelical church. Most preachers and church planters struggle with impatience. We have goals to achieve, targets to hit. Wherever we are, it seems, we are itching to leave. Here and now is never enough. We want to get to some

March 8, 2016