by Tim | Jan 31, 2011 | God, Our Culture, The Church World, The Gospel |
As many of you know, I was a member of the North Alabama Conference (United Methodists) for 8 years by being a member of two of their churches during that time. During that time, I heard many sentiments expressed about the current struggles for Methodists. Methodists moaned that they were a minority in the land of Southern Baptists. They didn’t moan just because they were a minority, but because they continue to be a shrinking minority. This means less congregants, which means less churches and less money to do everything they want to do. That is definitely a frustrating thing to go through. The current bishop, Will Willimon, believes that a large part of the problem is poor leadership. While I can agree that there is a problem w/poor leadership (and I think this can be said for all denominations to a smaller or larger degree), the agreement stops there. Because how he measures leadership is different from me. For him, the best way to tell if a church has spiritual vitality is by looking at church attendance numbers. Click here to read his words on that matter. This idea is also mentioned in this other article. Here’s another. To those who would say it’s not about the numbers, he would disagree in yet another article. My response? While I disagree with the bishop, that doesn’t make him a bad person–it just makes him pretty much like so many other modern church leaders out there. I think we would all do ourselves a favor if we remembered that the same Jesus that said, “You will know them by their...
