Pastor’s Message: January 7th, 2020
By now, you have seen the news reports. A wide-ranging group of United Methodists met together with a well-known mediator to work out an agreed plan for separation to submit to the 2020 General Conference. This plan will enable us all to put decades of contention regarding the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the Church...
Pastor’s Message: December 17th, 2019
In our final installment considering the phenomenon of church decline, church consultant Thom Rainer posits that a final major factor of church decline is that churches are slow to respond to change as change accelerates all around us. Rainer suggests that while churches use to lag behind the technological and cultural changes by five to...
Pastor’s Message: December 10th, 2019
The fourth reason for faster church decline as laid out by church consultant Thom Rainer is related to the second reason. We previously discussed the decline in the number of people from the Builder generation born before 1945. This was a generation that was fiercely loyal to institutions. Generations since are less loyal leading to...
Pastor’s Message: December 3rd, 2019
In week three of our series about reversing the accelerating decline in churches, we look at a factor that may not seem to be a part of Chapel Hill’s experience. In Week One, we discussed the impact of the decline of Cultural Christianity which provided benefits for people to be in church even if they...
Pastor’s Message: November 26th, 2019
Two weeks ago, we began to look at five reasons church consultant Thom Rainer set forth that churches are declining and/or dying faster today. The first reason, you may recall, was the decline of Cultural Christianity in which people often joined churches for the social, economic, and political benefits offered by church membership in a...
Pastor’s Message: November 19th, 2019
Last week, I began a series of newsletter articles addressing five reasons church consultant Thom Rainer suggests local churches are in decline and dying and what we can do to reverse the trend. It was my intent to continue that series this week. However, we learned this week that there is a matter that needs...
Pastor’s Message: November 12th, 2019
If there is one question that comes up regularly in our local churches it is, “How do we stop the decline in our beloved church?” This question comes from a place of concern from people who have been members of their church for many, many years, have wonderfully blessed memories of days past when the...
Pastor’s Message: November 5th, 2019
We have just completed a four-week journey in which we sought to transform our relationship with money. Yet leaving it to four sermons may not go as deep as we need. With that in mind, I encourage you to get the book Integrating Money and Meaning: Practices for a Heart-Centered Life by Maggie Kulyk. The book is...