Tag Archive - culture
16

What AOL Does Better Than Churches

I came across this a few days ago.

I haven’t gotten an invite, so I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to look like or what it’s going to offer.
I do know, though, that it looks like AOL is making an effort to re-emerge as a relevant tool.

I think a lot of churches could learn from this.

While our message can NEVER change, we must continually make changes and adaptations to our method to stay relative.

For too long, churches have refused to change.
They’ve refused to change their ways at risk of making a “few church people” mad.
Meanwhile, they’ve forgotten about their target market… the lost.

So, they’ve sacrificed advancing the Kingdom on the altar of self happiness.

While only time will tell if AOL’s new email feature and system will truly change anything,
at least they’re trying.

Unfortunately, many churches can’t say the same…

Your thoughts?


Written by on November 17, 2010 and categorized under Blog, Church Ministry, Featured, Leadership, Tech/Social Media

7

Texting Is The New Talking

Texting wasn’t even around just a few years ago.

A few days ago, I read this article from Yahoo saying that 1/3 of teens with a cell phone send more than 100 texts a day!

For me, one that deals with teens on a daily basis, this is important information.

It tells me that teens today would much rather read my text than take my phone call.

This wasn’t so when most of you (or even I) were teens.

It seems like the days of late night phone conversations with friends are all but over.
It seems like even the days of AIM are coming to a close.

The world is changing.
The way we communicate with our world is changing.
The aspects of relationship are changing.

You – as a parent, a pastor, a teacher, a friend, a brother, or a sister can battle the changing world, or figure out how to leverage the newly adopted preferences of the world.

The question is, what are we doing to reach the current generation in a way that leverages how they choose to communicate?

How are you monitoring what your teen says in texts?
How are you using texts to reach a new generation?
How are your relationships being changed by a new form of communication?

We can fight the changes in our culture, or we can use them as leverage for our message.

What other changes are happening in our culture that we need to leverage for maximum impact?
Are these texting statistics alarming in any way?


Written by on April 29, 2010 and categorized under Blog, Church Ministry, Featured, Leadership

17

Starbucks Christianity

Church has adopted a culture of talk, dress, likes, and dislikes.
The Church has developed it’s own culture.

It’s not that hard to spot a pastor in your local Starbucks.
You can tell by the clothes he’s wearing, the coffee he’s drinking, or even the computer on his table.

The Church has become another culture.

You don’t even have to be a Christian to live in this culture.
You can adapt your life enough around the things that a Christian is supposed to like and do enough to fool most people into thinking that you’re a part of the Church culture.
Heck, if you try hard enough, you can convince yourself that because of what you wear, do, and say, and go, it makes you a Christian.

There’s no problem with the culture.

The problem…
When the Church fails to live in the surrounding culture.
When the Church decides to STAY in its own culture.

Christ never called us to develop our own cliques for the purpose of forming more clones of ourselves.
Christ never called us to make following Him about the way we talk or the way we dress.

Christ called us to saturate our surrounding culture with Him.

Remember from your Sunday school lessons the people Jesus hung around with?
It certainly wasn’t only people from His own culture.
It was people from the world that surrounded him…
Prostitutes
Tax collectors
Diseased
Outcasts

Jesus saturated the surrounding culture with Himself.
We’re called to do the same thing.

It’s not the culture that is bad,
It’s refusing to live in the world around us that’s disobedient.

We have to reach out to the world around us.
We can’t expect that simply listening to David Crowder, going to Starbucks, wearing skinny jeans, and writing in our Moleskin is going to make us a follower of Christ or help others become one.

Don’t just be a member of Starbucks Christianity, be a follower of Jesus.
Don’t adopt Christianity as a culture to live in, adopt it as a life to live out.

Your thoughts?


Written by on April 7, 2010 and categorized under Blog, Featured, Life