ditching denominations

My local paper, which is usually as informative about current events as the back of a cereal box, ran an article this past weekend about the huge number of Americans leaving the major Protestant “brands” for nondenominational alternatives.

As is customary with The Tennessean, this is not really news, at least to those of us in the church. But I’m interested in your thoughts.


Do you agree with Pete Wilson—are there no longer any advantages to being part of a bigger group?

Or are we just replacing the traditional denominations with newer ones along newer lines—church planting networks, for instance, or regional alliances?


Does size of church matter—is it easier for bigger, richer churches to do their own thing?

What about the sort-of denominations that grow up around some of these bigger churches, like the Willow Creek Association?

What do we do with legitimate doctrinal differences? How alike do we have to be before we work together to plant a church or start a ministry?

And what does this mean for the independent Christian churches and our nondenominational denomination? More church leaders than ever before might be open to our emphasis on the simple New Testament church. Should we broaden our definitions of who’s in and who’s out—and would anyone like to comment on the irony of needing to?

new to you friday–men, man up

A few weeks ago, a guy I’m friends with said two things that made me smile.

The first—“I thought about dating you, but decided it wouldn’t work because I’ve been reading your blog and you’re too Christian”—because that deserves a trophy for Back-handed Compliment Of The Year.

And the second—“You need a strong guy, and there aren’t many strong Christian guys”—because it made me think of this post.




Let’s make up a statistic and see if we can get it to go viral. How about, “If you are a single Christian woman over 30, you are 64% more likely to get hit by a bus than to get married.”

Look both ways, ladies.

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At dinner with some friends this weekend, one of them described the guy she’d just started dating. He was raised in a Christian home but no longer attends church or “practices” any faith. My friend likes him and plans to see him again but she’s also approaching it casually; she realizes his lack of faith is a major issue.

Whether or not she should date a non-Christian at all is a whole other discussion. In his book How to Get a Date Worth Keeping, Henry Cloud asserts that dating unbelievers is fine if you approach it as a way to make new friends, have fun, and grow as a person. As someone who dated and subsequently did the love and loss routine with an atheist, I would argue the opposite point of view.

But wherever you land on that, the point is she’s dating this guy (let’s call him Jack) because even though she knows dozens of Christian men her age at our church, not one has ever asked her out. And before you ask—yes, she is smart, attractive, outgoing, and generally “together.” So are my other single friends, many of whom struggle with the same situation. Why the dating drought when it comes to Christian men?


I obviously can’t speak for the men, but based on the statistics I’ve read it doesn’t seem they lack interest in marriage and family. The majority of single men—believers and otherwise—say they hope to marry and raise children.

Yet many Christian guys don’t date—they lead Bible studies and singles events, they pray for a wife, they attend group activities for years on end, but they rarely exert a little energy or spend a little money to know any woman individually.

Nothing’s wrong with groups, but Jack didn’t wait for verification from five buddies as to whether my friend might be interested in him. He initiated conversation with her, expressed his interest, and took a risk.


God created men to be initiators, so this kind of assertiveness gets our attention. My friends and I are strong women, but we refuse to usurp that role and act as the pursuer. If our Christian brothers won’t, either, what’s the new strategy? My friend summed it up well as we finished our coffee. “I don’t know what will happen with Jack, but it’s frustrating to have few alternatives. I guess we’re just supposed to be ‘waiting on the Lord.’ Okay. We’re waiting……”

I’m really not trying to be down on men here. I know it’s hard to take those kinds of risks, and I know women can be confusing and contradictory. But I do believe that, despite the difficulties, God created men to step up and take action in every area of their lives—which includes “finding a wife” (Proverbs 18:22).


Guys, we don’t expect you to quote poetry or be able to benchpress your car. We just wish you’d spend a little less time reading Wild at Heart and a little more time living it.

Fun in the Son

On Tuesday the movie Jesus Camp was released on DVD. Although I missed it in the theaters (do theaters even show documentaries anymore?) I made sure to swing by Blockbuster Tuesday night to pick up a copy.

The film is about a children’s minister named Becky Fischer and the “Kids on Fire” camp she leads each summer in North Dakota. Fischer unapologetically claims to be building and training an army of young soldiers for God, a new generation to take back and reform America’s corrupt government and to win others to Christ.

I knew the movie would be critical of the camp, and that plus my 30 years in Christian circles meant some things felt familiar: The rampant “Christianese” talk. (“I just want to be hungry after Jesus.”) Blaming all social ills on the removal of prayer from schools. The assertion that America is God’s chosen nation. Puppet shows. The inevitable comment that “We’ve read the back of the book and we win!” Rants against Harry Potter. (Gotta love this from Fischer: “Warlocks are the enemies of God—in the Old Testament Harry Potter would have been put to death!”)

But other things were different: The camp’s combination of revival-style, confrontational preaching and music drove children as young as six into emotional frenzies. These young kids repented for the sins of their nation, “pleading Jesus’ blood” on themselves and on the country. They fell on the floor, raised their arms in surrender, and sobbed. It was disturbing to see young children in such emotionally-charged poses.

And the puppet shows were about the antichrist taking over a person’s body in the end times.

At other points in the week of camp, these same children were encouraged to smash porcelain mugs—which represented the power of the devil in our government—with hammers while rebuking the evil spirits influencing our nation. This, also, was often accompanied by weeping.

The kids also talked to and prayed for a life-size cardboard cutout of President Bush, who was positioned in front of an American flag while the children chanted “One nation under God!” (Which left some doubt as to who they were chanting to.)

Like Fischer, I believe today’s kids can have a huge impact on our world, and it’s important to reach as many as possible with the love of Jesus. (As the movie states, 43% of evangelicals are “born again” before age 13.) Each week I teach a Sunday school class of preschoolers and each Wednesday evening I tutor five impossible fourth graders. I get it.

However, the key word there is love. When Jesus welcomed the little children to come to him, it wasn’t to stick red tape across their mouths and force them to demonstrate against abortion (another fun part of the movie). As I watched this film, I just wanted to hug these sobbing, guilt-driven young kids and remind them of Jesus’ great delight in their little lives.

Near the end, Fischer says, “The extreme liberals are watching stuff like this and quaking in their boots and saying, ‘Oh my goodness—what are these kids going to be like when they grow up?!’” I’m not an “extreme liberal,” but I wonder the same thing.