“In hindsight, we realize now that the way we went about raising our concerns, while acceptable in the business world, is not the way we should deal with fellow Christians,” Mars Hill Seattle’s elders said. “We made a mistake in not calling these churches prior to sending the letter.” Seattle’s prominent Mars Hill Church says... Continue Reading

Eight years of property litigation involving the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has ended, but most parishes that broke from the Episcopal Church still face negotiations over their buildings. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week denied an appeal from the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, which had argued that it owned the property, the Anglican decided... Continue Reading

Cregan Cooke, the director of communication and media at Redeemer Presbyterian, Manhattan’s best-known megachurch, told me that parishioners use mobile devices during services to look up Bible verses…and that the church has recently developed its own app, which contains a sermon podcast and community news. It’s been downloaded more than twenty-five thousand times. Publishers Weekly... Continue Reading

It’s also the Baptist way to tell the truth and trust the people. The truth is that Pleasant Valley is a wonderful Southern Baptist church that has been rejected by the DMBA because of that body’s fear and rejection and misunderstanding of doctrinal beliefs that are embedded in the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and... Continue Reading

Church-appointed messengers of the Baptist General Convention of Texas voted Monday to slash funding for Baylor University by nearly $1 million on the first day of the annual conference at the Amarillo Civic Center. The new agreement with Baylor reduces funding to $1.9 million from the $2.8 million the convention contributed in 2011, Texas Baptists... Continue Reading

About 90.4 percent of congregations are using email to reach out to their members and 69.2 percent have a website. In addition, congregations increasingly have a Facebook page (41.3 percent), blog (12.7 percent) and podcasts (11.6 percent). More congregations across the U.S. are turning to modern technology, some even encouraging attendees to use iPads and... Continue Reading

But evangelical churches are also experiencing a decline in attendance…That bucks older conventional wisdom that conservative equals growth. In recent years, conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod have reported plateaus or losses. Bleak and bleaker. That’s the assessment of a new report on the... Continue Reading

The complaint he probably hears most often is that the Church is anemic when it comes to discipleship. “Usually, the reference is made to a lack of depth, or a lack of time spent in one-on-one discipleship.” As editor and online facilitator of a website that includes a global community of 80,000 pastors and church... Continue Reading

We affirm that Jesus is the eternal second person of the Trinity who came to earth, God-in-the-flesh, lived a sinless life, died as a sacrifice for the sins of the world and was raised bodily back to life on the third day. An increasing segment in our denomination does not affirm these positions.” After six... Continue Reading

Formally known as the apostolic nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador represents the Holy See to a foreign government, but also plays a central role in advising the pope on naming a country’s new bishops. Pope Benedict XVI has named Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano as the Vatican’s next ambassador to the United States. The widely expected... Continue Reading