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9 Signs of the Times
We cannot ignore the seismic shifts in the world around us. Church futurist, Leonard Sweet charges, “If nothing in your ministry has changed in the past year, you’re not keeping up. Some Christians have minds that have not changed in fifty years. Not even rocks stay that still.” (AquaChurch pg. 234) Below is a brief overview of the context & era in which we minister. In short, here’s…
9 Signs of the Times
1.Chaotic Change: Senior professor of church growth at FTS, Eddie Gibbs points out that we live in an era discontinuous & chaotic change. And Gibbs describes William Easum’s view that current church practices were the product of the Industrial age, “a world of slow, incremental change.” But according to Easum, we live in the Quantum age, a world of complex and rapid change.(ChurchNext, pg 19) No one urges the church to acknowledge these swift and dramatic changes more than Leonard Sweet. He explains that, “change is happening so fast, we can’t really imagine the world of our parents, and we can’t really imagine what will be our children’s world. There is a new web page every two seconds, a new product every thirty seconds. World knowledge doubles every eighteen months, with more information having been produced in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand.” (Aqua Church, pg. 16) What does this all mean? Gibbs concludes that, “what we are experiencing is not a short-lived turbulence but the dawn of a new era-or the creeping shadow heralding a new Dark Age, depending on your perspective.” (ChurchNext, pg. 66) And what is our perspective? Faced with this new reality, Continue Reading…
10 Things to Celebrate
I just wanted to take a minute to share & celebrate with you what’s been going on in our church since the transition-over 7 months ago. (Can you believe it? We’re almost one year into Chapter 2 already!)
10 Things to Celebrate
1.One of the 1st things we needed to address was our mounting indebtedness which was just at $300,000. At the 1st of the year in an Encounter service, I asked you to pray that we would be able to sell the old fire escape teen center despite the down turn in the real estate market. Well, just this past week we sold the teen center for $550,000. So, I’m thrilled to announce that to date all of our accumulated back bills are now paid off, we are operating within our budget & we have put aside a small reserve!
2.Now that we’ve had some time to monitor Elim Café it is evident that it will pay off its loan of $25,000 sooner than expected-in under 3 years! Remember, once Elim Café is paid for, 100% of the proceeds will go to missions. Imagine…in just a few short years, Elim will be throwing off thousands of dollars into missions & outreach work every year! Now, that’s coffee on a mission! Continue Reading…
