New England Perspectives
A regularly updated collection of articles written by New England leaders and thinkers. Looking for news articles? Click here.
What is the Church?
What is the church? To the readership of this blog, such a question might seem insultingly basic. Not so. It’s foundational. I am passionate about the revitalization of declining historic churches in New England. Answering this question will lead directly into another twin question, one that is the single watershed in whether a church will revitalize or continue in the throes of death.
How Great Is That Darkness
Six hours ago I was squeezed into a small, white-washed stairway of stone. I think the headroom was less than five feet. My shoulders touched both side walls. And I was descending, round and round, inside a castle turret. The Bunratty Castle was last used in the late 1600’s by the O’Brien family in Ireland.
The Gift of Time
I have a big extended family. Both sets of grandparents had six kids, plus some adopted kids, and just about all of those kids had three or more kids, and so on. Family reunions were massive affairs. We are a family spread all over the globe (many are missionaries), and we are a family that likes to get together as frequently as possible.
Enchanted Forest
I’m pretty sure I could fill a book with all the ways parenting prepared me for the pastorate. I’m a PK (pastor’s kid), I had superb and exhaustive seminary training, and I got to sit in a front row seat to watch, from the inside, church done well and church done poorly. All of those were powerful training for me when I became a pastor for the first time at 41. Another piece of helpful pastoral training was experience in the trades as a business owner. But I believe all of these fall second to what I learned, and am still learning, from parenting my kids.
Forget about the Back Door
“Pastor,” we heard the conference speaker say, “your front door is the most important, but you can’t forget to pay attention to the back door.” That sounds like good advice, doesn’t it? Growth comes through the front door, but growth is retained by means of the back door. The voice of wisdom might be understood to say that depth of discipleship is best attained by keeping the back door closely guarded. (In case these terms are unfamiliar, the front door refers to people coming to your church for the first time while the back door refers to people quitting your church).