31 Thursday Mar 2016
Posted in Posts
Are you interested in helping refugees but aren’t sure how? When a crisis is so big, it can feel overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can actually do. Yet while you may not be a politician or director of a non-profit organisation – or even be living anywhere that you can volunteer – you can still make a difference.
Read the whole thing for ways to help.
29 Tuesday Mar 2016
Posted in Videos
Videos like this are one more reason to like ICOC Hotnews:
28 Monday Mar 2016
28 Monday Mar 2016
Posted in Music
27 Sunday Mar 2016
Posted in Church Planting
It’s not just a academic question. It really goes to the heart of what we should be pouring our resources into, and what kind of leaders we should be training.
Karl Vaters offers some good analysis:
Instead of comparing roses to redwoods, I’d like to propose a way to compare apples to apples without participating in the “who’s better?” game.
How about these two questions, side-by-side: What are the benefits of 10,000 people worshiping in a megachurch led by one pastor? What are the benefits of 10,000 people worshiping in 100 small churches led by 100 pastors?
Now that’s apples to apples.
Read the whole thing.
26 Saturday Mar 2016
Posted in Posts
Some good advice for evangelists and evangelizers:
One man put it best: “It’s as though you see the text as an outsider.”
What he was trying to say is I have a tendency not to assume things. I often argue with myself during a sermon, taking on the persona of one who disagrees with what I’m saying and then answering the objection. I think psychologists have a name for that and psychiatrists have a drug for it. I’ve managed to avoid treatment long enough to figure out what I’ve been doing all these years and to give it the name “expository apologetics.”
I want to encourage other teachers to look at a text and ask, “What questions does this text raise? What doctrine am I expounding, and what objections are common? What would a person hostile to the gospel be thinking if he or she heard me say this?” These are just a few of the questions that can turn any sermon or lesson into an exercise in expository apologetics.
Read the whole thing.
25 Friday Mar 2016
Posted in Church Planting
Though not from our fellowship of churches, we can learn from others who have experience in things like church planting. Not all their lessons apply to us, but these seem worthy of consideration.
Two big mistakes:
1. Launch with a handful of people in a living room. If that worked for Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, it’ll work for me.
Truth: Nope. It most likely won’t. Hybels and Warren are outliers from a past generation. Decades of evidence and research consistently shows that churches with a launch team of under fifty people will struggle to ever gain viability, sustainability, and momentum….
2. Build a decent launch team but rely on advertising to bring in launch day guests.
Truth: Far too many dollars have been wasted on direct mailers and billboards by new church plants….A person who visits based on a direct mailer is less likely to return than a person invited by a launch team member.
Read the whole thing for ten positive things to do.
24 Thursday Mar 2016
Posted in Posts
From David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church:
Men don’t follow religions. Men don’t follow philosophies. Men don’t follow ideas. Men follow men.
Why is this?
For millennia men have organized themselves into hierarchical units to achieve their objectives – hunting, battle, seafaring, etc. Their very survival depended on the strength and wisdom of their leader.
So for men, competent leadership is subconsciously linked to survival. Men are greatly comforted when led by a man they trust. But they panic when their leader shows signs of incompetence.
Read the whole thing.
23 Wednesday Mar 2016
Posted in Countries of the World
Source: 2014 ICOC Church Survey Data.
21 Monday Mar 2016
Posted in Music
