Culture
Question of the Week
Each week, Neue asks a question that is meant to challenge, inspire and encourage today's ministry leaders. Feel free to respond and discuss in the comment section. This week, we want to know: Do you schedule time for you and your team to be creative?
John Mark McMillan
We talk to John Mark McMillan about his new album, Economy. Click to listen now or subscribe at iTunes.
The Ministry of Advent
Christmas can be a stressful time of year, and Christians are not immune to the pressures and demands of this season. Many Christians find it difficult to significantly engage with Christmas on a spiritual level. Have you ever heard a Christian say “it just doesn’t feel like Christmas?”
Christianity Shouldn't Be Cool
I remember my first Critical Mass Bike Ride. I had been invited by an acquaintance, and I showed up on my old mountain bike with a rusty chain. It was an intimidating environment—about a dozen crust punk and deliberately nerdy kids riding these road bikes with no brakes. I had no idea what this culture was all about. After several months of going to Critical Mass and getting on some friends’ fixed gear bikes, I built my own—largely unaware of the cultural phenomenon that was beginning to brew across the world.
Question of the Week
Each week, Neue asks a question that is meant to challenge, inspire and encourage today's ministry leaders. Feel free to respond and discuss in the comment section. This week, we want to know: Which leader of the faith, living or deceased, has had the greatest impact on you?
Question of the Week
Each week, Neue asks a question that is meant to challenge, inspire and encourage today's ministry leaders. Feel free to respond and discuss in the comment section. This week, we want to know: How do you view women and ministry? How can men and women partner together more effectively?
Question of the Week
Each week, Neue asks a question that is meant to challenge, inspire and encourage today's ministry leaders. Feel free to respond and discuss in the comment section. This week, we want to know: What does it mean for your church to set heaven in the context of the culture around you?
Helping Christian Artists Succeed
Each year hundreds of artists make the move to a major city to pursue their ambitions in the arts. This opens the door to a lot of unsolicited advice: “Be sure to have something else to fall back on.” “Give yourself a time limit after which point you should move on to something else.” “Beware of losing your morals in the theater.” But rarely will you hear someone say: “Moving to New York? Get ready for a spiritual awakening!” or, “Hey, you should check out this great church there!” Can you imagine if the churches in New York City or Los Angeles or Chicago became so engaged with artists in the city that being an artist there was inextricably tied to questions of faith and calling?
Question of the Week
Each week, Neue asks a question that is meant to challenge, inspire and encourage today's ministry leaders. Feel free to respond and discuss in the comment section. This week, we want to know: What role does social networking play in your professional and ministerial life? What about in your personal life?
7 Ways Pastors Fail at Social Media
Want to know where the people we lead are during the week? Online—Facebook and Twitter, specifically. These two social media platforms are larger than anyone could have imagined only a few years ago. Consider these facts about Facebook: Facebook currently boasts more than 600 million users. More than half of all American adults use the site regularly. The average Facebook user spends 20 hours a month on the site. While Twitter’s numbers are lower, its influence is still massive: Twitter has more than 200 million users. In an average week, 1 billion tweets are posted. Twitter has been cited as inciting protests and revolutions in Egypt, Iran and other places around the world. It’s clear these platforms are some of the world’s biggest. So why are Christian leaders sometimes so bad at using these powerful tools?
Is Church Worth It?
The reasons why church is a frustrating experience are numerous. For many, church can be hard to stomach, and the reasons why are difficult, complex and not easy to answer. But no one said Christianity was easy, or that being part of the Church would be a breeze. Despite the fact that it can be enormously frustrating and maddeningly imperfect, the Church is what followers of Christ are called to be. The Church is described in Scripture as nothing less than the body of Christ on earth. It’s not a slight, optional activity. According to Scriptures like Romans 12:5 and Ephesians 3:6, it’s the one body with many members, each an important and crucial piece of the mission of Jesus Christ. Why should twentysomethings not give up meeting together as the Church? The short answer is that the Bible says not to (Hebrews 10:25). But there are plenty of other practical arguments for the necessity—and ultimate privilege and thrill—of being a part of the Church....
The Drunk and The Hypocrite
I’ve played music in churches and bars all my life. In many ways, these two gatherings are very similar. Both sets of “regulars” are looking for meaning, carrying out a ritual of sorts—hoping to find purpose, something that makes sense of the pain. At first glance, it might seem the Church is a better place to look for hope than the bottom of a bottle. Every day, alcoholism and drug abuse destroy families, ruin careers and wreck communities. On the other hand, theological beliefs and misunderstandings have been blamed for divisions, divorces and wars around the world. The trouble with each institution lies within us. True, alcohol feeds a different fire than pietism, but neither a drunk nor a hypocrite look very good in the daylight. We carry our problems into the church the same way we carry them into a bar—they just react differently in each location. Unfortunately, the sins that exist within the walls of the Church are harder to spot....
Why is the Church So Segregated?
As part of a congregation that set out to be a multiracial church as we were planted, we ran into significant problems. Despite being planted by a Latino congregation with a mixed group of people, we grew to become another white suburban church. We decided to ask some other pastors in our area and in our denomination how to bridge this gap.
Rebuilding the Church in Haiti
In the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake one year ago, the church of Haiti saw great physical and spiritual damage. But while their roofs collapsed and their people grieved, the faith of this resilient people still showed signs of life. Churches Helping Churches, founded by James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll, is one organization devoted to repairing buildings and restoring hope for the pastors of Haiti, as well as their people. We spoke with CHC field liaison and coordinator Jacques Louis, a Haitian pastor himself and a faculty member of Port-au-Prince’s Seminary of Evangelical Theology, about the state of the Haitian church before and after the quake, and what it will take to strengthen the faith of this fragile nation.
Q&A with Jaeson Ma
In the Fall 2010 issue of Neue, we talked to Jaeson Ma about his work with Student Church Movements, his hip-hop music and his vision for mixing media and discipleship. In this excerpt from that conversation, Ma shares his opinions about the roles of house churches and megachurches in the faith community. You can read the entire interview here. It seems house churches resonate most with younger generations. Why is that? What you’re seeing is a great divide or exodus from the institutional church or the organized church or the Western church as we’ve known it for the last few decades or the last century. And I think a big reason for that is because in the modernistic era it came from a standpoint of, “This is truth, and this is absolute truth, and we have it and you need to believe it.” It was very much a top-down approach to faith, but what...
Q&A with Bill McKibben
A Sunday school teacher and one of the foremost writers on environmental issues, Bill McKibben looks at how we can live more responsibly on a planet that is becoming unbalanced. In your first book, The End of Nature, you said things 20 years ago about climate change that no one else seemed to be saying. Is it gratifying that people are finally paying attention to this? It would have been nice had it happened more quickly. I wrote that when I was 27. And, contrary to what I thought would happen, it didn’t change the trajectory of the world’s economic system! Your book The Age of Missing Information chronicled your experiment to watch 24 hours of cable television in your city—all 100 channels, so 2,400 hours of TV. What did that teach you? The most powerful message that came through the television all the time, and it’s the message of a consumer society, is that: “You’re the most...
Evangelism Reclaimed
I talk to lots of people about Jesus. Some go to church and others fell away. Many have never been to church and are brutally honest about why they’d never start. They are atheists, agnostics, believers and “spiritual but not religious.” They come from a variety of Christian and non-Christian faith traditions in the U.S. and beyond. Like it or not, that makes me an evangelist. When I first thought this term might apply to me, I was skeptical. Evangelists are old men like Billy Graham or nutty guys who stand on the corner in mid-town with megaphones, right? How could a woman who grew up in a secular home and spent a lifetime thumbing her nose at Christ and Christians possibly be an evangelist? The thought of becoming a Christian, not to mention “sharing the Good News,” seemed awkward and embarrassing.
Questions That Will Shape the Future of the Church
Church history has been led by men and women wrestling with questions—urgent and piercing questions influenced by ancient theology, current events and the culture of their day. Our moment now is no different. Neue invited a group of leading church thinkers and practitioners to weigh in on what the urgent questions are for our Church today. How we answer them will define the Church of the future.
Is the Church Responsible to Find People Friends?
Growing up, I had friends who I liked being with. In elementary school, it was Mitch, who shared my passion for sports. When I was in middle school, I hung out with my basketball team. In high school, I dated Emily, who is now my wife. When I was in college, it was the guys in my dorm. After college, I built friendships with people I either worked with or volunteered with. And later, my friends were the people on my staff team. I’m sharing these life snippets to prove I’m capable of making friends without the church’s help. Because of that, I’ve always been intrigued by the church’s apparent need to organize friendships. In every other area of our lives, we find friends just fine. But when it comes to church, we think the church needs to find us a friend. Churches organize Sunday school classes, small groups and various ministries. We create events and gatherings to help Christians meet fellow Christians. In the end, people eat, sleep, parent, work and meet with other...
Enter to Win 2 Tickets to Catalyst!
We are giving away 2 tickets to Catalyst, October 6-8 in Atlanta, GA! ENTER TO WIN BY FOLLOWING THESE STEPS: 1. TWEET THIS Just entered to win 2 tickets to the @CatalystLeader Conference from @Neuemag. http://bit.ly/cZOoKi 2. COMMENT BELOW Comment below and tell us why you should win. Remember to include your Twitter handle. 3. ENTER THE CONTEST BEFORE SEPTEMBER 2 at 5PM EST We will choose 2 random winners and announce them on the next Neue podcast, September 7!
