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6 Steps to a Growing Church. Yes, Even Here! – Part 2
In Part One of Ben Rigsby’s post on reviving a church in a small town he talked about life-changing worship and reaching new people. In this post he discusses 4 more steps to growing a rural church… It takes critical mass to launch a church, it takes the same to revive This is a tough →
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6 Steps to a Growing Church. Yes, Even Here!: Guest Blogger Ben Rigsby
Anybody who’s spent more than a minute with me since last summer has heard me yammer on about the people l met in Archer City, Texas on my leave. One of those folks is the dynamic pastor of First UMC, the Rev. Ben RIgsby. You don’t often find church planters on the rural frontier but →
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The Country We Live In: Race, Sin, and the Birthday of the UMC
Behind every discussion in American life is the question of race. At this stage in our history, with the long shadows cast by slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the struggle for civil rights, and last year’s gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville, the impact of race is not something we can ignore if we want to →
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Chicken Houses and Change
The old saw that says rural churches have a hard time with change may be getting tired. All you have to do is look around those churches to see that a lot of things are already changing. Maybe the question isn’t whether we will change, but how. It seems like every other day now I →
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Spring and A Way Forward
You’ve heard it before in a thousand different forms: change is hard. In churches it can often come as a variant of the old stock phrase: We’ve never done it that way before. Even when we take the first steps of a journey toward something new, it’s easy to give up when the going gets →
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Adapting Worship without Climbing Trees
After this many years in worship and as a worship leader, I’ve seen just about everything. Sung prayers in a cathedral choir? Check. Pentecostal healing service in a South Carolina swamp? Check. Taizé? Check. Cowboy Church? Check. Blue jeans and guitars? Check. Radio show a la Prairie Home Companion? Check. In a tree? Check. I →
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Doing Construction Poorly (A Memoir of Campus Ministry)
It’s Spring Break time for a lot of college students in the next few weeks and around this time of year my thoughts turn to doing construction work poorly. That’s how I spent my Spring Breaks for seven years as a campus minister—taking my willing hands and severely limited construction know-how to diverse places in →
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Why Churches Can’t Be Normal Again
Sometimes I have a fantasy that March 2019 will come, the special General Conference of the United Methodist Church designed to heal our rifts will have passed with a grand reaffirmation of our union, and we’ll all go back to normal. That’s the funny thing about normal in the church, though—there’s no going back there. →
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How to Part Ways With Gadites: A Review of Olu Brown’s New Book
When Olu Brown imagines the conversation between Moses and the leaders of the tribes of Reuben and Gad, it’s a poignant scene. These two tribes, who had traveled through the wilderness on the promise of a new land, were stopping short of the goal, requesting to remain behind as Israel moved on across the Jordan. →
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Lay Minister Expels Ghosts, Sees Two Rural Churches Turnaround
“I look around my church and all I see are ghosts.” It was time for a pastoral change and I was meeting with the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee in my role as the District Superintendent, preparing the church and myself as we looked toward the appointment of a new pastor. The woman speaking was a longtime →
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Heartlands 