I am currently on vacation . Please enjoy a previous post. AVALON JOURNAL PART III: ENJOYING HAPPY HOUR VS BEING THE CHURCH CHRIST WANTS By nativitypastor : July 23, 2011 It’s hot in Avalon. Too hot for the beach, or for much of anything else. Fortunately, the heat provides even more incentive for me to […]
I am currently on vacation (and trying not to work). To that end, please enjoy this blog from July 2011. The weekend is coming and that means I have to go to church again. I could go Sunday, but that is just prolonging the pain. I’ll go to the 5pm Saturday Mass and get it […]
More than a month ago, I had a post about finding a title for our forthcoming book. We’d been working on it for a long time at that point. We’ve been discussing it and working on it ever since too. Today, I got a telephone call from my editor to report back on another meeting […]
A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog about a friend of mine who felt like he was languishing in his parish: it was boring and bad and the pastor was sort of grumpy. He’s searched for another parish, but with no success. And then he ran across this incredibly vibrant and joyous church […]
This week some of our staff got together to begin planning for a conference, which we will be hosting this fall. A “church” conference. Why a church conference? What is a church conference? Here’s the background. For a number of years we set aside a Saturday each fall for a retreat for our parish staff. […]
I had an interesting experience this week with my associate Tom. We went “church shopping.” Now, when people use that expression, they are usually referring to the exercise of trying one church after another looking for a good fit. It really doesn’t bother me that people do that, in fact I think people should probably […]
Yesterday was the first day of Vacation Bible School. It was also the funeral of Tim Muth. Tim was a generous and beautiful man who served as a youth minister and a children’s minister here at Nativity. He died suddenly last week at the age of 50. The juxtaposition of raw grief at the death […]
On June 1st we posted a blog that generated more comments and questions than most. So much so, that I decided to return to the topic. The post looked at reasons churches don’t grow. There are reasons that churches don’t grow and it’s not just bad luck or bad karma or because of circumstances beyond […]
A parishioner was telling me a story about her son. It goes like this: he moves to a different part of the country for college and stays there to take a job there after graduation. Shortly after moving there he begins looking for a parish to attend Mass and get involved. That in itself could […]
This is the final week before we deliver the book to the publisher on Friday. And I thought it would be fun to give you, my loyal blog readers out there, a chance to help us out. The working title of the book is “Make church Matter.” The lower case “c” is intentional as a […]
