Reporting Sexual Abuse
“As a pastor, do I have to report sexual abuse?” The question above was a search phrase that sent someone to my web site. I hope they found what they were looking for. Just in case I haven’t spelled it out clearly enough, I offer the following thoughts. Yes! At least in Oklahoma you do. [...]
This is a Great Idea…
… From Marty Duren, Lead Pastor of the New Bethany Baptist Church in Buford, GA. …two Christmases ago we held our annual Office Party and invited all our single moms to attend. Each of them received a gift from the staff. Last year we invited our senior adults and each of them received a gas [...]
Wedding Priorities
My oldest has been going to a lot of weddings lately. She’s 25 – it’s that season in her life – and it seems like she’s going to a wedding nearly every weekend these days. Last December she went to one small presbyterian church and neither my daughter nor her friends knew where it was [...]
Forced Terminations
From BP News: Study: 1,300-plus dismissed from Baptist church staffs in ’05 At least 1,302 staff members were dismissed in 2005: 314 bi-vocational, 655 full-time pastors and 333 full-time staff, the study found. The totals for full-time pastors and staff represent the highest totals during the 10 years, but (Bob Sheffield a pastoral ministries specialist [...]
Bi-Vocational Pastors
I used to have another blog – Interregnum – that focused on SBC/church issues. I have closed that web log but wanted to republish some of the posts here. The post below has been expanded from the original to include some of the comments. It began with a comment from Debbie: “The heading on your [...]
To Build or Not to Build
Ken Sorrel at Returning to Biblical Missions has a thought provoking post on The Burden of a Building: Our dependency discussion looking at the topic of church building construction now turns to the all too frequent situation of missionaries and volunteer teams providing for a structure that cannot be easily maintained by the local congregation. [...]
Children, Marriage, and Church
It’s no secret that churches in America are losing 18 to 30 year olds. The teens our youth groups leave home for college and within a few years they are missing in action. Conventional wisdom has been ‘don’t worry about it; they’ll come back when they start having children’. At least I think that’s the [...]
Teens and Sex
Hannah Rosin, in a review for Slate, has an article titled Even Evangelical Teens Do It: How religious beliefs do, and don’t, influence sexual behavior. The article is a review of Mark Regnerus’ Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers 80 percent (of evangelical teens) think sex should be saved for [...]
Divorce Among Christians
Over at Kevin’s place (Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee) there is an interesting discussion about why bad things happen in this world. (Go and read Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?) In it a skeptic asks several questions about the nature of Christianity; the last question is Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate [...]
Intentional Interim Ministry
Each year, the Arkansas Baptist State Convention hosts a continuing education conference for Intentional Interim Ministers. Between counseling, grading papers, and preparing for sections of the conference I am to teach, there isn’t much time for blogging. See ya’ll next week.
