thought exercise on Church Membership

[R]eliable quantitative research around this has brought some helpful insights to light. Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge have released the largest study ever done on dechurching in America i...

Whether we like it or not, the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that is, from the time we become a Christian, we are at the same time a member of the Christian church … Our membe...

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

Whether we like it or not, the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that is, from the time we become a Christian, we are at the same time a member of the Christian church … Our membe...

Despite a widely shared belief that faith should inform ethical decisions at work, a mere 18 of 230 respondents had ever consulted a pastor for advice about a work-related matter. Of these, six were ...

Read any study on human satisfaction and you will see the paramount role of relationships with others. And yet, so many of us readily exchange friendship and community for success and achievement, onl...

Jane Addams (1860–1935), a leading American social reformer, was a dedicated advocate for racial equality, women’s suffrage, and pacifism. In 1931, she was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1900,...

Did you know that the history of the word “fellowship,” is, rather simply, a relationship among fellows? The idea of a fellowship being that two or more people have been bonded together in some signif...

In Paul’s day the church quarreled over the Jewish law and over genealogies, over meat sacrificed to idols and sabbath practices, and over favoritism shown to the rich patrons and negligence shown to ...

So if we want to get the church right, we have to learn to see it as a salad in a bowl, made the Right Way of course. For a good salad is a fellowship of different tastes, all mixed together with the ...

The Church is not a clean, well-lit place where everything runs smoothly and actions automatically match ideals. It is, in the words of the Gospel, a field of chaff and wheat growing up together and b...

Despite belonging to a church where recitation of the creeds is an integral aspect of worship, I was for many years part of that group of moderns Pannenberg referenced who have wondered (sometimes sil...

The story goes about a young man (or woman!) with dreams of growing a small church nestled in rural Oklahoma. Despite his relentless efforts, the church continued to teeter on the edge of extinction a...

Christ followers were first called Christians at Antioch—about fifteen years after the birth of the church at Pentecost. There must have been something remarkable about this particular group of believ...

Presbyterian minister Michael Lindvall begins his fictional story about a pastor in the Midwest in The Good News from North Haven like this: I am the pastor of Second Presbyterian Church. There is...

I was in London browsing one of the ubiquitous British tabloids and an advertisement for a new health club grabbed my attention. The picture was of a magnificent gothic church sanctuary that had been ...

I grew up attending churches designed for church people. No one said it, but the assumption was that church was for church people. The unspoken message to the outside world was, “Once you start believ...

In this short excerpt, Father Roderick Strange speaks to those who want to write off the church. It is written primarily to a Roman Catholic audience, but it relates quite well to Protestants as well:...

The neighborhood bar is possible the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but...

Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own sermons, as I was trying to help a congregation see itself not as a building, but the body of Christ. It has been adapted for TPW. No...

And here’s a further complication: the church is not an entity outside of me. I do not stand on the outside looking in. I am as much part of the church as (in the words of Paul) a hand is a part of a ...

I was taking a tour of the Church of Scotland’s beautiful Glasgow Cathedral, which is technically the High Kirk of Glasgow. It is estimated that over 50,000 university students live within walking dis...

What is the place of the church in relation to God’s mission? Pastor John Stott offers some crucial thoughts, For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purposes of God. It is not a div...

Circles of intimacy—marriages, families, friendships, and churches—exist not only for themselves but to enrich the lives of those outside the circle as well. // Here’s a phrase you’ll never read in th...

When the Hebrews, recently enslaved but now free, were gathered at Sinai to begin their formation as a free people, God spoke the words that defined them over against their four centuries of slavery i...

One of the first Bible study groups I ever attended was at the Sigma Chi fraternity house at Cornell University. We were a hodgepodge of academics, sorority girls, fraternity boys, star athletes, matu...

In one generation, the place of Christianity within culture dramatically shifted as we experienced what theologians and sociologists of religion call the “death of Christendom.” Christendom isn’t Chri...

Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith…in Acts 15, which declared that the new gentile Christians didn’t have to enter Jewish culture…. The converts had to work out…a Hellenistic way of...

I can’t stress enough that this important process of examination can only be properly done in the context of a local church. You need other Christians who are committed to your spiritual well-being. T...

Reporters Alex Alston and James Dickerson tell a sad story about a church that sought to integrate its ranks: The Mississippi Delta was in a tizzy over rumors that blacks might show up at white church...