Earlier this week Glenn Beck made waves by urging Christians to leave any church that supports social justice.  Promptly after he made these statements, prominent Christians all over the country reacted negatively and started to urge their followers to boycott Beck.  While I understand the reaction, I’m wondering if it was the correct one.  After all, this wouldn’t be the first time Christians made a knee jerk reaction and made the wrong move. Read the rest of this entry »

As someone who works in the field of information technology I am fascinated by the concept of Open Source Software (OSS) development.  OSS is primarily the principle that by allowing anybody the chance to work on your source code you’ll end up with better code. Another name for it is community based development. Sure there is the possibility that someone sabotages your project, but most people that care about the project will treat it with respect and actually help to make it better. The thing that makes OSS work isn’t that it’s (largely) free software, it’s that communities develop around specific projects and these communities work together to make the project better.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the development of the church in terms of open source.  Initially the two seem to be polar opposites, church and software development, but the more I’ve thought about it the more it makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

There are those who would like to say that Christianity is easy.  Receive Jesus into your heart and you will be saved!  That’s it all that is required to be a Christian.  There is very little indication that life change is required, that there is supposed to be a peculiar aspect to the followers of Christ.  Risk is not even considered when discussing the implications of faith.  How did this happen?  Suddenly, or not so suddenly, we’ve melted Christianity down to a short prayer and weekly church attendance – wait scratch that – monthly church attendance.  I know that many in the evangelical wing of the church would (and will) disagree with me, but I think that’s wrong.  How can Christianity be simply simple?
Read the rest of this entry »

For better or worse, at some point most Christians will need to look for a new church.  For some people this is an easy task because they have friends or family going to a particular church.  But if you’re new to an area or have specific requirements for what you would like for a church the task becomes more difficult.  With this in mind I present here are a few tips on how to find the church that is best for you.
Read the rest of this entry »