Articles for tag: Mark A. Taylor

May 5, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Age-old

By Mark A. Taylor Let me tell you about my new best friend, Bob. Bob”s the guy from the other end of the office who paused last week beside my cubicle, festooned with “Happy Birthday” banners and a big, red “65” in the middle of the display. Bob said, “Hey, wait a minute!” I looked up from my desk and smiled. “This isn”t real, right? This is a joke, right?” He was completely sincere. This fine man couldn”t believe I was celebrating the welcome-to-Medicare birthday. I”m not sure his reaction is due principally to the fact that he doesn”t wear

April 28, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Listening to Lead

By Mark A. Taylor Maybe you”ve seen this happen at your company. The business has been sold. The new bosses arrive, and they”re very confident they know how to run the show. If they didn”t think they could do it better than the last guys they wouldn”t have forked over all that money to buy the operation. So they wade in with firm goals and bold plans to take the business forward. In the process, these new managers announce “new ideas” with the explanation, “This has never been tried here before.” But even though the long-timers watching from the shadows

April 21, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Heartfelt Leadership

By Mark A. Taylor When you go to a conference for church leaders, you expect to come home with a folder full of methods, strategies, and tactics for growing your church. This is especially true when a megachurch minister is the keynote speaker. What secrets does he know about growing a church? What”s working in today”s culture? What approaches are guaranteed to bring success? What techniques have been most effective where he serves? But when Aaron Brockett kicked off the Intentional Church Conference at First Christian Church, Decatur, Illinois, last week, he didn”t talk about methods at all. Or numbers.

April 14, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Finding Our Place, Claiming Our Heritage

By Mark A. Taylor Talk to Mike Baker and you”ll discover a guy who”s serious about his work while not taking himself too seriously at all. In fact, in our latest episode of Beyond the Standard, Baker used the word unfortunate to describe the “celebrity culture” in today”s church climate. “There are a lot of great preachers and leaders in churches of 150 and 200 who in their part of the world are really doing great things for God and for his kingdom,” he said. “But they”re just not ever going to get the accolades” that often come to leaders

April 7, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

A Middle Ground in the Religious Freedom Debate

By Mark A. Taylor Does any Christian, in the name of religious freedom, really want the right to refuse service to a gay or lesbian? I doubt it. Christian restaurant owners, gas station operators, and Wal-Mart managers have been doing business with gays and lesbians for years, without a problem. The issue isn”t service“”whether I”ll fix a grilled cheese sandwich for a hungry gay guy or sell a dress to a lesbian she”ll wear at her wedding. The issue is endorsement. No one does a morality check before someone enters his business. Every day Christians do business with adulterers, fornicators,

March 31, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Resurrection Promise, Hope in Our Pain

By Mark A. Taylor Some preachers choose Mary as the subject for a Christmas sermon, but I”m guessing we”ve never heard an Easter sermon about the mother of Jesus. There”s good reason for this, I suppose, because Scripture barely mentions her in one crucifixion account, and omits her by name altogether in the resurrection stories. But the certain fact that she was there when Jesus died (John 19:25-27) is enough for painters and storytellers and moviemakers to include her, watching and weeping, in their crucifixion portrayals. The Scripture doesn”t describe her anguish or her tears, but we have no trouble

March 24, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Bookin” It

By Mark A. Taylor I remember a conversation 30 years or more ago about book publishing by writers in the Christian church and church of Christ. “Evangelical publishers won”t publish books by Christian church writers,” a Standard Publishing salesman said. “And if Standard Publishing publishes books by Christian church writers, Christian bookstores won”t sell them.” I don”t know if that was true then, but I can promise you it”s not true today. Last year we published essays about book writing by Mark Atteberry, Arron Chambers, Dave Ferguson, Anne Milam, Daniel Overdorf, and Jamie Snyder. Each of them is a leader among Restoration Movement churches.

March 17, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Most to Jesus I Surrender

By Mark A. Taylor Is anybody still using the slogan “Not equal giving, but equal sacrifice”? It used to be standard verbiage in stewardship campaigns raising money to underwrite a budget or build a new auditorium. If the expression is no longer used, I”m not disappointed. Although the phrase does touch the Bible”s principle of proportional giving, I”m a little suspicious of that word sacrifice. After I”ve given a tithe and more, I still can pay for food, clothes, cars, the mortgage, and a vacation. How much would I have to give before the gift would qualify as sacrifice? Perhaps

March 10, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Ideas for Easter””or Anytime

By Mark A. Taylor At our annual contributing editor January retreat, someone asked, “Why do churches always make such a big thing of Christmas?” She was reflecting on the fact that Christian Standard almost always puts “Christmas” on a December cover, but sometimes we hardly mention Easter at all. Maybe we”re giving in to the culture on this. For many people, Christmas preparations begin in the summer, and we see Christmas everywhere by the end of October. Christmas concerts, Christmas parties, Christmas gift-buying””they fill the month of December. Indeed, sometimes by Christmas Day, we”re too tired to celebrate. Churches follow

March 3, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Something Special

By Mark A. Taylor It happened again, this time on the campus of Lincoln Christian University on a cold Friday night a couple of weeks ago. Mark Mittelberg, a best-selling author, widely traveled speaker, and well-known Christian apologist, was speaking to leaders about LCU”s initiative “Room for Doubt.” But before he talked about the materials he”s helping to develop for this ministry, he paused to speak about the movement of churches that will promote and use them. Mittelberg is something of a celebrity in general Evangelical churches; his résumé includes stints on staff at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago and

February 24, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

A Voice at the Table

By Mark A. Taylor New York publishing executive Joanne Lipman wrote last year about the subtle barriers and “benevolent sexism” she”s experienced in an industry that says it”s open to women leaders. After reading her article, “Women at Work: a Guide for Men,” I couldn”t help but wonder: Do women working in my world, i.e. local churches and parachurch ministries, also feel stymied by the men who dominate their workplaces? I wrote several women church leaders to get an answer, and I reported last week all of them answered “yes.” Since then, I have heard from a couple more women

February 17, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Your Church: a Boys Club?

By Mark A. Taylor Many, many years ago I bumped into the president of a parachurch ministry who was considering a woman for an executive role with his organization. “You know,” he said to me, as if he couldn”t quite believe the statement he was about to make. “She”s really sharp.” She would be the first woman to serve (with distinction, I might add) with such authority at his institution. That incident reminds me of a Christian college teacher who wrote on a student”s paper, “You write really well for a woman.” Admittedly, both these incidents occurred decades ago. But

February 10, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Something to Talk About!

By Mark A. Taylor If anybody should be talking about sex these days, it”s the church! That was our thought as we planned this month”s long string of posts. But frankly, sometimes I wondered if we were doing the right thing. After all, aren”t we a little tired of hearing about sex? We”ve become numb to sexual innuendo on television and at the movies. We”re weary with each week”s new “coming out” story on the news, and many of us have regrettably resigned ourselves to the growing acceptance of gay marriage. We watch sexual infidelity ruin families and damage local

February 3, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Something Extra, Something Useful!

By Mark A. Taylor Have you listened to our monthly online interview program, Beyond the Standard? If not, you”re missing another storehouse of information and help, free from the offices of CHRISTIAN STANDARD. Each month we offer a new interview, and almost every episode is archived for you to hear and share whenever it would help. Almost two years of these hour-long programs are available. Just go to www.blogtalkradio.com/standardpublishing. First you”ll see an announcement of upcoming broadcasts. For example, later this month we”ll be interviewing noted expert Dr. Mark Laaser for a program titled “Solving Compulsive Sexual Behaviors.” Listen live,

February 1, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Ideas for Easter””or Anytime

By Mark A. Taylor At our annual contributing editor January retreat, someone asked, “Why do churches always make such a big thing of Christmas?” She was reflecting on the fact that CHRISTIAN STANDARD almost always puts “Christmas” on a December cover, but sometimes we hardly mention Easter at all. Maybe we”re giving in to the culture on this.  For many people, Christmas preparations begin in the summer, and we see Christmas everywhere by the end of October. Christmas concerts, Christmas parties, Christmas gift-buying””they fill the month of December. Indeed, sometimes by Christmas Day, we”re too tired to celebrate. Churches follow

January 27, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

It”s Not Just a Woman”s Issue

By Mark A. Taylor It”s time to broaden our discussion about women”s roles in the church. And before you click to the next article, let me assure you I”m not interested here in debating whether to ordain a woman staff member, add a woman to the preaching team, or name a woman as deacon (or elder). You”ve likely already decided about those questions, and I”m not going to change your mind with 600 more words. Instead, I think we need to back up and look at a bigger picture. While debating and discussing specifics like those above, maybe we”ve been

January 20, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

After Selma

By Mark A. Taylor About 100 people were at the 7:05 p.m. showing of Selma in the theater where my wife and I sat last Saturday night. Of that number, we were two of about 10 white folks in the house. Everyone else was African-American. This was something different from the typical weekend movies crowd. Whole families were there. And senior citizens; I saw at least two on walkers labor to their seats on the handicapped row. It would be much more than two hours of entertainment for them. We were about to see a depiction of history these folks

January 13, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

Contributors, Indeed!

By Mark A. Taylor Today is the middle day of this year”s annual CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editors retreat. For all of us who attend it, this is a special gathering that enriches us in a unique way. Of course, personal enrichment is a byproduct of the meeting. Its stated purpose is to brainstorm topics and writers for future editions of CHRISTIAN STANDARD. And this is a purpose that has been wonderfully achieved, year after year. Many of the innovations and changes you”ve seen in the magazine through the years have come at the suggestion (or prodding!) of this group. Several

January 6, 2015

Mark A. Taylor

The First Answer

By Mark A. Taylor Is your church healthy? Unfortunately, our quest to answer that question may send us looking in the wrong direction. Our tendency is to consider symptoms, not causes, of church health. We analyze statistics about giving or growth or participation, externals that may indicate how we”re doing but don”t tell how to make it better. What can we do to make our church healthier? The best answer””certainly the first answer””is to look in (not out), to cast our gaze upon ourselves. The function of any individual part affects the health of the whole. A quick look at

December 30, 2014

Mark A. Taylor

New Steps and a New Gift

By Mark A. Taylor Every year at Christmastime I look for a way to give something to someone who can”t or won”t give me anything in return. Usually this means an extra offering to a favorite mission, a check written to a local shelter, or gifts purchased for our church”s project to “provide Christmas” for needy children. I do this because it”s always seemed to me that exchanged gifts are trades, not really gifts. They”re fun, and they can be a good part of office or family celebrations. But true generosity doesn”t happen with rules about dollar limits or gift

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