Articles for tag: Arron Chambers

A Playground for All Children

By Jennifer Johnson In 2012 Arron Chambers preached a sermon series on Nehemiah at Journey Christian Church and challenged them to do a “great work” in their community of Greeley, CO. At the same time, he and his wife, Rhonda, asked their four kids to pray about a great work they could do as a family. “At the time, our youngest kids were 8 and 10 and loved going to the playgrounds in our neighborhood,” says Chambers, who serves as lead minister at Journey Christian. “They suggested we build a playground that all children could enjoy, including kids with developmental

Collapsing Culture Brings Family Ruin?

By Mark A. Taylor The deterioration of Christian influence in our culture has caused the collapse of stable families in our society, right? Although many conservative Christians believe the above idea, at least one writer challenges it. Mary Eberstadt, in her book How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization, proposes that the collapse of family structures in our country and several others has caused the loss of religious influence, not vice versa. Quoted by Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition website, Eberstadt said: People are social beings. They learn religion the way they learn language: in

A Conversation with Arron Chambers

Meet Our Contributing Editors: This month we continue a series of interviews with CHRISTIAN STANDARD”s contributing editors. Arron Chambers, lead minister with Journey Christian Church in Greeley, Colorado, talks about intimacy in marriage and intimacy with Jesus and says the two are remarkably similar. Interview by Jennifer Johnson What”s going on at Journey these days? We”ve been looking for a new facility, and a church in town has a great building that”s twice as big as ours. They suggested we buy their building and they buy ours. To raise the money, we decided to scrap the capital campaign and do something that fits

An Honors Program Focusing on Leadership and Community Service

By Jennifer Johnson “There”s a lot of discussion about the cost of investing in a college education,” says Dave Miller, vice president of advancement at Nebraska Christian College. “We want to talk about what the college is investing in the student.” At NCC in Papillion, NE, part of the investment is The Institute, a new program that rolled out in January and launches officially this fall. “The Institute is like an honors program, but focused on leadership potential and community service,” Miller says. Students must maintain at least a 3.0 grade point average to participate, but academic aptitude is just

My Greatest Leadership Challenge

By Arron Chambers Have you ever played the trust game? You know, the one where you fall back and someone catches you? If you ever belonged to a church youth group and had a youth minister who didn”t always prepare, and occasionally needed a time “filler,” you”ve certainly played it. Yeah, I hate that game too. When I was younger, I hung out with the kids in the youth group who thought it was funny to let the preacher”s kid keep falling till he hit the ground. Yeah, that was a fun game . . . for the kids with

One-Day Project or Sacrificial Service?

By Jennifer Johnson “The church has left the building!” “Don”t miss our great day of service!” “This Sunday we”re not going to church, we”re going to BE the church!” These churches mean well. They want to show God”s love to their communities in practical ways while making it easier for church members to practice serving others. And some, like the annual ServeFest coordinated by Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, have grown into very effective partnerships with dozens of other area churches in a common cause. (Check it out at www.servefestmd.org.) But I often wonder about the recipients of these

Inspired by Nehemiah, Church Repaints the Walls

By Jennifer Johnson For several years, Journey Christian Church (Greeley, CO) has helped meet a number of needs at nearby John Evans Middle School, from volunteering at sports events and feeding needy families to providing school supplies and coordinating an annual Christmas party for students. After studying the book of Nehemiah, lead minister Arron Chambers and the church began praying about a “great work” (Nehemiah 6:3) they could begin this past July. Just a few weeks later, when the John Evans principal asked Chambers if church members could paint the school”s hallways and cafeteria, he knew the church had found

You Must Read This . . . A More Meaningful Story

By Arron Chambers A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story By Donald Miller Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011 I picked up this book because it was a compilation of lessons a favorite author learned while editing his life. I couldn”t put it down, devouring it on one four-hour plane flight, because it was at once both convicting and compelling. I immediately developed the book into a sermon series for my church; it had helped me find a more meaningful story, and I wanted the same for others. At the beginning of the book, Donald

Cohabitation for Idiots

By Arron Chambers OK, I can hear what you’re thinking. This is an opinion section in the Christian Standard, and you’re going to try convinciing me that living together before marriage is a bad idea. Why don’t you stop wasting my time and tell me why I’m right to believe it’s a sin for women to serve Communion? Well, because I’m not and you’re wrong, but that’s just my opinion and not the point of this opinion piece. And anyway, I’m the one who was asked to write an opinion article about something I care about and I want to

Magazine Recommends “˜Eats with Sinners”

Eats with Sinners: Reaching Hungry People Like Jesus Did by CHRISTIAN STANDARD blogger and contributing editor Arron Chambers was named one of Outreach magazine”s recommended resources of the year in its new issue out this week. “Chambers offers a pragmatic and concrete approach to evangelism hospitality,” the magazine writes. “Excellent for use in local churches and groups.” Eats with Sinners is published by Standard Publishing. To learn more about the book and to order it, click here.

A Resource for Readers of Books

By Mark A. Taylor “Do you publish books?” It”s a fair question for Standard Publishing, because our company is known for so much more than books: Sunday school courses for every age, a best-selling and award-winning VBS, classroom supplies, youth material, electives for children and teenagers and adults, small group resources, teacher-training materials, and much more. But amid all these Bible-teaching resources is a growing library of books that many adults have come to savor and share. Some of them are best-sellers, too. All of them inspire and entertain and teach. You”ll find many good reads among the books we”ve

Loving Sinners Outside Church-as-We”˜ve-Known-It

By Mark A. Taylor In this, our second week of “Eats with Sinners” features, we”re reminded again that we may not always be comfortable getting close to folks untouched by the gospel. When we venture outside the predictability of safe relationships inside the church, we”ll probably bump into people whose lives are messy, whose choices have been bad, and whose language or appearance or habits make us ill at ease. That”s what happened when Rick Bundschuh took seriously the mandate from a church that hired him as youth minister. “Reach unreached teenagers,” they said. But they didn”t count on “unreached”

Interview with Arron Chambers

Arron Chambers By Brad Dupray Arron Chambers is a pastor, husband, father, writer, triathlete, and he loves to eat . . . with sinners. Arron”s latest book, Eats with Sinners: Reaching Hungry People Like Jesus Did, examines Jesus” approach to creating conversations with people over a meal and how to apply that approach today. Each chapter of Eats with Sinners deals with a character trait of Jesus that made eating with sinners an effective means of sharing his message. Arron is lead minister of Journey Christian Church in Greeley, Colorado, and a contributing editor to Christian Standard. Arron maintains the

Lessons We”ve Learned from Eating with Sinners

By Brandon Smith The ministry I serve, the Christian Campus House at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, does not necessarily operate under what I would call a “written budget.” This mostly is because we rarely have money with which to budget. And while I am only half joking, my serious half supposes one of the biggest line items, if we did have a written budget, would be “food.” College students like to eat. A lot. And we like to feed them. We place such an emphasis on food in our ministry, not because we are gluttons, but because something

Some of My Best Friends Are Lost

By Arron Chambers This is an excerpt from the book “Eats With Sinners” by Arron Chambers. To some, Lost is a highly addictive TV show about the survivors of a plane wreck who find themselves on a deserted island””in the middle of the ocean””where nothing makes sense and they are not alone. Lost might be a zone where single socks, class rings, your favorite hat, sunglasses, my brother”s car keys, the Watergate tapes, and my six-toed cat (Sasquatch) dwell while waiting to be found . . . or not. Lost is how I feel listening to my daughter as she tries to

The Case for Staying Connected

By Mark A. Taylor After hearing Scot McKnight speak at the Stone-Campbell Journal Conference in Cincinnati this spring, I was pleased to see what he wrote about the Restoration Movement at his popular blog (http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/)*. McKnight is a sought-after speaker and writer who teaches atNorth Park University in Chicago. His winsome and incisive commentary in Cincinnati on spirituality in our postmodern age showed why so many follow what he has to say. What he said in his blog post is especially encouraging: I contend that the Restoration Movement, or the Stone-Campbell movement, made up of the Christian Church and the Churches of Christ, is American

An Issue to Discuss, a Resource to Consider

By Mark A. Taylor We like to think every issue of Christian Standard is a winner, of course, but we believe this week”s content is especially useful. Church staffs, elders, evangelism committees, or anyone interested in reaching the lost will find help here. Read Kent Hunter”s strategies for evangelism and decide which of them is most urgent for your church to adopt. Look at the experience of Marcus Bigelow and Paul Williams and agree on the implications for your congregation and for your personal approach to non-Christians. Consider David Bycroft”s experience and approaches and how you could use them where

Why I Write Books

  by Arron Chambers I”m often asked how I became an author. I never planned on being an author. I liked to write but never thought anyone””besides my Mom and my 10th-grade English literature teacher, Mrs. Beardall””would ever read anything I”d ever written. But that all changed over lunch with my friend Ben. I”d had the privilege of baptizing Ben back in January 2004. Immediately after his baptism we began meeting every other week for discipleship, fellowship, and to celebrate what God was doing in his life. Ben is a very talented man who””at the time””was writing a book. Over

Tell Us Your Read!

By Mark A. Taylor He”s a writer who was talking to booksellers about reading. Everyone in the room listened keenly to his points, partly because it was their business, and partly because most of what he had to say is bad news. “Only 5 percent of the American public ever sets foot in a bookstore,” he said. “The average man in America won”t read another book after the day he leaves high school. We”ve become addicted to screens, whose message is, “˜Let me entertain you.”” He quoted statistics that say half of the world today is illiterate, and then, “But

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