by | Apr 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
But experts say it can offer opportunities for leaders and congregations to grow.
Conflict had become the norm at Trinity Church in Redlands, California.
The lead pastor left in 2022 amid a wave of disgruntled attendees. Following his departure, some church members remained upset at the congregation’s elders. In all, there had been at least a dozen situations that came up over a 14-year period.
When Doug Baker arrived as interim pastor, he knew the conflict had to be addressed. Trinity called in Peacemaker Ministries, a group that mediates conflicts from a biblical perspective. Over a weekend in March 2023, Peacemaker held 15 meetings with people embroiled in the church conflict, put together a plan, and peace began to emerge.
Healing started. Many conflicts were resolved. Some people forgave. Some left the church. Trinity, which now averages 500 attendees in Sunday worship, began to change.
The conflict resolution process revealed that the congregation didn’t feel as if the elders valued their opinions. The elders began to listen humbly, and they have kept listening. Two elders stand at the welcome booth each Sunday to hear people’s opinions about church matters. According to Baker, “conversations have opened back up.”
The situation at Trinity has “been better—much, much better,” he said. “There is a peace. There is a graciousness, a unity, a love for each other and for the lost. People are reengaging with ministry. We are seeing specific ministries thriving a whole lot better because people are not worried about the struggle. They are more concerned about the kingdom.”
According to church conflict researchers, Trinity illustrates some broader trends. Conflict often provokes pastors to leave their churches or at least consider leaving, researchers …
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by | Apr 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
As a lifelong athlete and coach, I know sports build character. But I worry about the idolatrous, selfish culture of American athletics.
When my wife told me that my son received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty at his football game, I was enraged. He’d aggressively thrown the ball back to the official he believed had missed a call. I flew into a lecture about leadership, respect for authority, and composure. I even called friends and family to register my disbelief and embarrassment.
But before I got too self-righteous, my parents—always eager to come to their grandchildren’s rescue—reminded me of the times I was far from a model of sportsmanship. I’ve had my fair share of penalties and made hotheaded remarks. I’ve come a long way, but I still haven’t fully mastered the art of balancing passion and prudence in the arena.
Accordingly, I beg your charity as I explain (and preach to myself) why I believe sports can be a helpful servant for Christians—and an awful master. We can value the virtues that sports teach and be encouraged when players like Justin Fields and Paige Bueckers boldly proclaim their faith while being wary of the culture of idolatry, pride, disrespect, and selfishness that crops up in every level of American sports, from peewee soccer to the NFL.
As a former college football player and a current Little League coach, I’m convinced sports are a great way to build character in children and teach the value of leadership and institutions. Youth sports provide social proof that diligence and teamwork are essential aspects of improvement. Children learn real-world lessons by overcoming the mental and physical obstacles sports present. Truths that are difficult to communicate in theory suddenly make sense on the field.
Sports are particularly valuable in a culture where …
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by | Apr 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
They might not even know you’re there. When paranoia eclipses our witness, here’s what to remember.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
Some colleagues and I happened to be meeting in New England this week, so we drove a little bit north to a small village in Vermont called St. Johnsbury, right in the line of the totality of the solar eclipse.
Even before the sky darkened, I was mesmerized by the people gathering in the town square, each with a sense of anticipation and excitement over the shared experience. We ended up standing on the front lawn of someone’s house, eating sandwiches while we waited for the sun to hide. The homeowners sat on their stoop and were not only unperturbed by our camping out on their property but seemingly enjoying the chance to welcome people to their place.
Several articles this week noted how the eclipse seemed to have the effect of bringing out kindness and connection, almost the way a natural disaster would, except in collective wonder instead of in common suffering or fear. Not only that, some studies are showing that this sort of neighborliness and openness is far more common than we think, eclipsed behind the maelstrom of division we see on social media and on cable news.
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen describe our sense that the country is hopelessly and irreparably divided as “America’s reality distortion machine.” Most people aren’t fringe-right Christian nationalists or fringe-left campus activists. Those fringes, though, are amplified not only by the nature of our media but also by the incentives of politicians to cater to the extremes.
A couple weeks ago on my podcast, I asked social psychologist Jonathan Haidt some of the questions I’d received from listeners since the last time we’d talked, one of the …
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by | Apr 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
At 89 years old and more than 60 years into ministry, the Stonebriar Community Church founder plans to remain its primary preacher after the church names his successor.
Chuck Swindoll has said that pastors “should never retire,” and the 89-year-old won’t be stepping away from the pulpit even as his church welcomes his successor.
Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, announced this week that Swindoll will transition to founding pastor, continuing to preach on Sundays, as Jonathan Murphy becomes its senior pastor on May 1.
“This is a very unique way of expanding, of ‘moving into another chapter,’ as we often call it here,” said Swindoll in a video clip alongside Murphy, a Belfast-born preacher who currently serves as chair of pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary.
With over 60 years in ministry, Swindoll is the oldest megachurch pastor in the country and one of the most influential. He has been vocal about his plans to remain active in ministry until his death.
“One of my great goals in life is to live long enough to where I am in the pulpit, preaching my heart out, and I die on the spot, my chin hits the pulpit—boom!—and I’m down and out,” he said at age 75. “What a way to die.”
In his new role, Swindoll remains Stonebriar’s regular preacher, while Murphy leads day-to-day ministries and fills in to preach when needed, according to the church’s announcement.
“We have the founding pastor being able to continue to preach as long as the Lord would have, and I can have a season as a senior pastor taking responsibility for the staff and caring for them and the ministry direction of the church at large,” said Murphy, who has been a guest preacher at Stonebriar and serves on the board for Swindoll’s long-running radio ministry Insight for Living.
The two have been preparing …
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by | Apr 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
The new dystopian thriller reminds viewers it’s not just what we witness that matters, but how.
There’s nothing more frightening than the sound of a camera shutter in the new film Civil War.
Distributed by A24, the production company behind releases like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Past Lives, the movie depicts the remnants of a United States government battling the Western Forces, an alliance between Texas and California. If you’re looking for reasons—Why these factions? Why now?—you won’t find any answers. The film is frustratingly opaque on logistics, though we’re able to hypothesize based on a few offhand comments. (The unnamed president, played by Nick Offerman, is entering his third term and isn’t gun-shy about using air strikes against American citizens.) Even so, a California that cooperates with Texas seems far-fetched.
For writer/director Alex Garland, our incredulity is the point. “I find it interesting that people would say, ‘These two states could never be together under any circumstances.’ Under any circumstances? Any? Are you sure?” he told The Atlantic. By asking us to accept his premise, Garland forces viewers to consider the ideological divisions we take for granted. Turns out, the why doesn’t matter all that much. Dystopia, no matter how it comes about, is still dystopia.
What is clear, though, is that the war provides an opportunity for journalists, capitalized on by photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), her Reuters colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), and her mentor, New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Their coverage of atrocities shapes our experience of this imagined future. Many of those chilling camera shutter sounds come from Lee, as she documents truly terrible scenes of domestic conflict with …
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