On Pentecost last year, 850 gathered for worship beneath an enormous yellow-and-white tent on a church lawn in Falls Church, Virginia. Folding chairs were arranged in roughly the same configuration as pews in a planned sanctuary to be built on that site.
It was Celebration Sunday at The Falls Church (Episcopal), and for the first time in recent memory, the whole congregation worshiped as one. The co-chairs ...
I spent my three-month summer sabbatical on a cross-country tour with my family, visiting 25 of the most effective churches in the United States.
Before I left, I expected to find a lot of similarities. The differences, however, surprised me most. I came back without a clear, monolithic model of effective ministry. Instead, I found myself confronted with options and choices.
There's a distinction between what pastors do on Sundays and what we do between Sundays. What we do on Sundays has not really changed through the centuries: proclaiming the gospel, teaching Scripture, celebrating the sacraments, offering prayers. But the work between Sundays has changed radically, and it has not been a development but a defection.
Until about a century ago, what pastors did between ...
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