Emerging Church and the Bible

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This is a description of “the Emerging Church and Young Seekers” from christianity.about.com

Solomon’s Porch, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a good example. Founding pastor Doug Pagitt saw thousands of college students in the area and knew they had dropped out of traditional church services. Pagitt offered them something different.

Instead of preaching from a pulpit, Pagitt sits on a stool and engages the participants in dialogue. Instead of rows of pews facing forward, Solomon’s Porch has sofas, arranged in a circle. And instead of organ music and 500 year-old hymns, this church has guitars and contemporary music.

Other churches in the movement hold young texters’ attention by projecting fleeting visuals to illustrate messages, accompanied by fast-paced discussion. Some include activities such as signing one’s name on a cross or walking a labyrinth. Worship may engage the senses with incense, candles, and bells.

While some of these new ways of doing church services are a departure from evangelical Christianity, others resemble ancient symbols and rituals of Roman Catholicism.

The writer of this article correctly observes that mixed within the desire to reach these young people is the incorporation of false religions and dubious elements that would probably not be valid for true Christianity.

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Missionary Software Recommendations

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Note: This page will be updated regularly with new recommendations.

I (David Cox) have been a missionary for about 28 years now, and if you count the years on deputation, around 30 years. In my lifetime, I have gone from nothing electronic to speak of to using powerful desktop computers now. When I was in my schooling years (1964-2002) computers hit the scene and are now common. My education (much after school was self-taught about computers, and I even taught myself Foxpro relational database, and programmed my own software) has spanned both no-computer, and computer. So let me start off by a couple of much needed points that people need to understand.

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Using Color correctly in Slide Prentations

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First of all, these principles are basic art class principles. Color is extremely useful in presentations, but note that there are some rules to observe.

Most missionary presentations use very few title slides, but some use a background kind of effect with an image within that “frame”, and a title. The frame and title would be where you would apply the principles in this post.

There is a very useful and nice program called VideoScribe that allows you to make a whiteboard type video, where a hand actually draws the image. These color balancing tips come from their website (you don’t have to use their program to follow this tip). I will use there images and add logos of companies to illustrate what they say.

http://www.sparkol.com/blog/captivate-your-audience-with-these-pro-colour-tips/

I will summarize the rules here.

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Missionary Calling: 7 Ways to Identify your Calling

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In this brief video, Tara Sophia Mohr (not identified as a Christian) speaks in general about identifying your calling in life.

See video at end of this post…

I would note that this is just a simple motivation type talk where Tara speaks in general to anybody about their calling in life. What I took away from this is that this is exactly what you as a missionary need to understand and present to your potential missionary partners so that they understand your calling. One thing is that you are called (not all missionary candidates are called by the way), and another thing is to communicate that calling to others, especially those that support you, and those that potentially are considering supporting you. This means that you need to highly persuade them of your calling. The elements that Tara presents are very useful in this task.

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The Objective for Preaching

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The Objective for Preaching An exhortation on what is the objective for preaching.

The Objective for Preaching
by David Cox

Objective for PreachingIt is amazing to me just how off-base so many preachers can get. There is a God given purpose for a church to exist. When you think about it, we (pastors and churches) are the work of God. God is not doing much outside of Christians, ministers, and churches. Maybe somebody can make a case that He does work outside of that framework, but for every little bit He works outside of that frame, He works thousands of times more within that frame of the church.

But we need to always keep our heads clear, and focus on what is God’s purpose for us. We can summarize the work of God (done mostly through ministers, members, and the church) as being the salvation of souls, and their edification.

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