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Not Enough Time
In church, we make the excuse that we don’t have enough time, but what we really mean is, “I don’t want to.” I don’t want to volunteer or I don’t want to miss my son’s soccer game or I don’t want to put one more thing on my plate. I don’t want to contribute. I…
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6 Keys to Engaging Seniors in Church
Growing up, my favorite people in church fell into the “senior” category. They were the most engaged in my life and were so happy to see me. I wasn’t a nuisance, even when I was incredibly embarrassing to my parents. I was so profoundly loved by the seniors at Trinity Episcopal in Alpena, Michigan. This category,…
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How about we occupy the church?
Of course the teens should occupy the church; but not just teens. Us! We should occupy the church! We should demand a better church! We should lay claim to our leadership of an institution that today only benefits some! Brian Kirk asks in a column for Patheos: “Should we help teens occupy the church?” which…
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9 Keys to engaging youth in church
[This post inspired my ebook, A Church for All. I encourage you to check out the information page to find out more!] When I started this series of posts on engaging different age groups in church (so far children and pre-teens), I deliberately chose the word church, rather than ministry. Engaging people in ministry isn’t…
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4 keys to engaging children in church
At a lecture in Atlanta recently, the Rev. Sam Portaro, author of Brightest and Best points out that “Children are actually written into Scripture.” They weren’t supposed to be seen. They were property. But Jesus spoke to them, healed them, accepted their donations, and told His disciples to be like them. We never take that last…
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Too polished
As I wrote yesterday, I participated in an online conference called The Nines, put on by the Leadership Network. The conference was free and open to anybody. I was relatively pleased with it, and given a different set of circumstances, I would no doubt have made more of an effort to watch all nine hours.…
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Defending the status quo?
Over at The Lead on Episcopal Cafe…
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changing my name
Maybe I shouldn’t, but I just did. I changed the name of this blog. Same address, new name. The Original Name When I first started blogging with WordPress, I began with a simple notion: that our approach as the church in planning for the future was MAD (mutually-assured destruction). My argument (which I still believe)…