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Future Church

August 10, 2025


“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

Recently, a good ministry friend of mine sent a video clip to me that had me shakingmy head. The clip featured a mega-church pastor telling of the church elders’ decision to sell seats at their worship services to help pay for a new sanctuary that was being built. Think of it as a religious form of Frontier Airlines selling seats on their flights, higher-priced for prime seat locations. The idea would raise money and take care of any confusion about where someone should sit on a Sunday.

I was pulled into the story as I listened to the pastor’s rationale. I was envisioning names for the different tiered seating locations, such as “Saints’ Seats”, “Club-Level Christians”, and “Upper Level Lepers.” Perhaps communion would take different forms, depending on the area in the sanctuary: French bread and French wine up front, Welch’s white grape juice and sourdough in the middle, and those pre-packaged juice and cardboard cracker crumbs up high.

It wasn’t until I received another text from my friend that I realized the whole production was a put-on, a spoof. I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

Maybe!

Future Church could take on financial weirdness like that. Years ago, I remember a TV evangelist/pastor having crutches nailed to the front of his church’s balcony. It was a motivator for people to send a “seed promise offering” to his church. It was slick and effective and manipulative. Future Church may look for other creative funding options to keep the lights on, considering the church-in-general’s shrinking base of financial supporters. We have not moved so far into the future that the words of Reverend Ike are no longer remembered. Reverend Ike would say, “The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. But Reverend ike says the lack of money is the root of all evil.”

In Future Church, if it comes down to having to prioritize one capital “M”, “Money” will take center stage over “Ministry.” I fear that some mega-churches and centuries-old churches will, out of necessity, pivot towards unique funding models, especially those that heavily rely on their pastor’s popularity and pulpit ministry.

Future Church may also look to create a “rah-rah” environment that rivals an NFL fan base. Translated: an emphasis on the superficial that doesn’t seek to touch the soul. People may look to identify themselves with a high-energy, flashing-lights-and-smoke, popular church more than Jesus. The unspoken rationale could be “Jesus saves, but Faith Fellowship gets my foot tapping.”

The heartache for me is the sense I have that our population’s inner spiritual void seems to continue to look for something that will satisfy their emptiness, but are hesitant to see a relationship with Jesus as being able to fulfill their need. It’s as if our culture has limited the gospel in a time where they look for things that go outside their limits.

Could it be, could it really be, that Future Church will take online reservations for Sunday’s prime time worship gathering, just like our local movie theatre does? Don’t even get me started on church cheer squad and flag corps tryouts!

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Who Do I Look Like?

August 5, 2025

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3)

At a recent meeting of our high school coaches, our athletic director asked a question that stuck in my mind. He said, “What is your team’s identity?” Concerning our high school girls’ basketball team, I could answer that halfway. Part of who we are is clear, but part of who we have been, in my opinion, resembles a life raft floating in the ocean to wherever the wind says it’s going. That might say more about my expectations after coaching basketball for thirty years than anything else.

Either way, our AD’s question got me thinking about our Christian walk. Who do I identify with? Baptists? More specifically, American Baptists? A hybrid form of Jesus and church culture thrown into the mix? Or, do I identify with Christ? And, what does that mean?

I’ve been a church participant since I was born. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was positioned in my mom’s arms within two weeks of my entry into the world. The only time I was church-negligent was in my college years when I fell to the temptation of attending Bedside Baptist on Sunday mornings with Rev. Sheets always there to comfort the weary. I promised the Lord I’d do better next week, but my prayers of repentance disappeared from memory by the next late Saturday night. Woe was me.

Otherwise, I had been as regular in my church attendance as our postal carrier’s delivery each mail day of the unimportant Metronet ads that keep flooding our box. But, even that, doesn’t answer the question of where my identity lies.

As I creep along in the early seventies, I find that the truths of my faith seem to seep deeper into my soul. The value of my walk with Jesus has increased much more than my seat in the sanctuary. Even the times I’m asked to fill the Sunday pulpit have become more meaningful as I read the text, ponder it, and discover other people’s thoughts about it.

Understand, I don’t boast or brag about my identity with Jesus. And please don’t think I’m impervious to temptation and failure. I also can’t ignore the fact that I don’t have much tread left on these tires. Jesus just seems to be closer these days. I marvel at his wisdom and consistency. I’m amazed at his gentleness and mercy. I long to look like him and, in many ways, have people be able to see him in me. Or, better yet, see me in his shadow.

I’m not exactly sure what it is, but we don’t talk much these days about our Christian identity. It’s a bit like my high school girls’ basketball team — none of us are pretty sure what it means or what it looks like, which isn’t all bad, because how Jesus is experienced through me is uniquely different from anyone else.

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HIJACKING WORSHIP

May 11, 2025

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.  No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.” (1 Corinthians 10:23-24)

The good thing about the Christian faith is the freedom we have as a result of Christ. The bad thing about the Christian faith—and the church—is that we have freedom as a result of Christ.

A puzzling contradiction, you say. Yes. We have the freedom to live for Jesus and a tendency to be free in spite of Jesus. When my agenda butts head with Jesus call, I often have a way of putting Jesus in the back pew so He doesn’t interrupt.

Worship becomes the incubator for the personal oozings of fractured people. In my years pastoring, the oozing and spewing happened in various ways. I remember saying the dreaded words, “Are there any other prayer requests?” Aunt Matilda’s hand would go up to share such intriguing news as the newest saga of her battle with gall stones. Uncle Wilbur needed to share with the congregation that he had sprayed the weeds on the north side of the building…so stay off the grass. Little Lucy asked for prayer for her daddy who had been flatuating like an elephant all week long.

And then there was the elderly hard-of-hearing lady who refused the devices the church had to help people hear, but she always felt free enough to tell the guest speaker to speak up because she couldn’t hear him.

And then there was the lady who felt called to be a worship leader and was going to impress the congregation with her talent and words from the Lord for an insufferable amount of time. Her word was much more important than the pastor’s sermon that he had put at least twenty hours into preparing.

And then there was the traditionalist who would visually show his disdain for any praise song, but overly expressive himself when any hymn was sung. It was as if anything written after 1950 could not be inspired by the Holy Spirit. A Sunday where more praise music was sung than hymns would always be followed up with a ferocious letter to the pastor about letting Satan become a resident of the music people.

On the other hand, there was the lady who used the eighteen verses (with the same words) to display her latest dance class moves, swiveling hips and swinging elbows included.

Or the young man who volunteered to do special music and, unbeknownst to the pastor, launched into the hit song by the Village People, “Y.M.C.A”, including the forming of each letter.

Or the elderly gentleman who volunteered to do the invocation prayer, which he used to inform the congregation who they should vote for in the upcoming election.

Or the visiting woman who, in the midst of the service, informed the congregation that the Christmas tree in the sanctuary was a symbol of the demonic.

In essence, just like the Corinthian church, there are various ways we still find the freedom to hijack worship and display the truth that we have not moved very far away from the warped congregation that the Apostle Paul had to spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to correct the course of.

Lord, help us!

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Traditional Kinda’ Worship

April 13, 2025

Since last August I’ve been serving as interim youth minister at First Baptist Church of Colorado Springs. Each Sunday I teach the youth Sunday school class and then attend the morning worship service.

I like it!

The worship service is a blend of traditional and other “stuff.” The “stuff” includes some creative worship elements that support the theme of the day. For example, today (Palm Sunday), everyone will receive a small palm cross (that was handmade two Sundays ago by the congregation after the post-worship luncheon) and come froward to lay it at the foot of the cross.

I like the involvement of the congregation in various parts of worship. The front of the Sunday bulletin is often a picture that was taken of a previous church event or part of a worship service…a baptism, the sharing of communion, a blessing, two people hugging one another, children laughing…it is very personal and displaying of “congregational life and love.”

There are traditional elements, including the Lighting of the Christ Candle by a congregational member, the singing of one or two hymns (also one or two praise songs), an invocation, and a Call to Worship. Pastor Dan has a great message that speaks to where we are but also brings in the setting of the scripture and how it has been lived out in the history of the church and/or the saints.

Different servers of different generations are the servers of communion each month, from 10-years-old to 90. I’ve noticed that a parent and their teen serve side-by-side. It’s a congregation that honors those who have passed on, as well as those who have moved on. Someone who is moving from Colorado Springs to somewhere else is given “bread for the journey” at the end of a worship service. Someone who has been baptized is given a framed ceritificate with the autographed names of everyone who was in attendance at that Sunday’s worship service.

In other words, there are extra doses of congregational care and connectedness that happen. It’s a needed ingredient for a long-standing (152 years) center city church that has seen a city grow around it.

Every church has its purpose and mission. It has become more challenging for this 70-year-old youth minister to find a place that feeds my inner hunger without feeling stuffy or superficial. There are other places of worship that could double as a concert venue. That’s not my thing, although it fits the needs of many others. On the other hand, there are places where eighty-six verses of “Just I Am” are sung at the close of a worship service with mounting pressure for someone to come to the altar. Not my thing either.

The thing that is often forgotten about worship is that it’s worship OF God, not worship ABOUT ourselves. Worship that is OF God will often have the interesting effect of touching the depths of our soul, while at other times ushering us into His holy presence that leaves us a bit shaken up. Just read the expereinces of the Israelites and the early churches, as well as the not-yet words of Revelation. Worship isn’t traditional, blended, contemporary, or preachy. Worship is just that…worship of the Holy Almighty One who graces and loves us.

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Lock-In Looney

December 31, 2024

“Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47)

My wife, Carol, reminded me that I’m not any spring chicken and that BYF (Baptist Youth Fellowship) is a few decades in my rearview mirror. The initials that more accurately apply to me these days are AARP. Nevertheless, I planned the youth lock-in at church for Saturday evening through Sunday morning, an 18-hour marathon fueled by two pots of coffee.

Why, you might ask just as Carol did, would I not only agree to but plan and encourage a lock-in for young people whose objective is to run the whole race of insomnia? After all, the last youth lock-in I headed up was in 1983 at the First Baptist Church of Lansing, Michigan. I can still remember the names of the excited kids: Steve Landon, Laurie Landon, Shirl Kentner, Jon Daniels, Jimmy Michels, Greg Nash, Michele Nash, Brian Baker, Becky Epps, Suzy Epps, Sara Epps, Becky Landon, Jenny Landon, Rachel Knox, John Girard, Phil Girard, and on and on. Perhaps the fond memories made me jump off the cliff for another go-around at lunacy.

Or maybe I remember how spending several hours together ended up being a bonding experience for the adolescents who came. It wasn’t like coming to church on Sunday with their families and being amongst a congregation of mostly older people. During that lock-in, they were the church, the Body of Christ, freed up to participate in the silliness of teenagers, talk about the topics of their world, and be who they were without feeling like someone was looking over their shoulder all the time. They could even run in the building and laugh long and loud.

In essence, this lock-in forty-one years later mirrored the one in 1983. Bonding and hilarious hysteria abounded. They enjoyed themselves and even settled down to focus on what they hope the Lord will do in their lives in the coming year. We shared communion together around midnight before doing something you can only do at a youth lock-in…watch “The Princess Bride” on the big screen in the sanctuary while munching on popcorn and drinking Coca-Cola (with caffeine!). At 4:30, we played the fast-paced group game that Jim Berlage taught us back in the 80s, “Mr. Boodle.” We went for a solid hour, and my voice began to give out at 5:30. They begrudgingly agreed to stop, and for almost an hour and a half, a silence settled over those who had been fighting the sleepies. I even grabbed forty minutes lying on a thin pew cushion with chiropractor implications.

The senior pastor, Dan Schumacher, and I have both discussed what we realize, and that is that only a clueless clergyperson would think that a thirty-minute sermon on a Sunday morning would be able to take care of the spiritual nourishment of a teenager. In fact, not just teens but anybody connected to a congregation. Okay, put another thirty minutes of prayer, singing, and sharing communion there. Even an hour of the community in worship doesn’t do it.

Young people need time together to bond. It is not a weekly lock-in, mind you! I can only do two pots of coffee every once in a while. Rather, occasional gatherings that create a fabric of caring, laughing, and being comfortable in the presence of their peers. It’s the youth equivalent of the early church.

And now, I’m working on building up my immune system for a weekend winter retreat. A good forty-two hours in a remote location where I pray there are shower facilities for the boys. A retreat with scented candles is one thing, but aromatic boys could be the death of me.

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Back Row Baptist Peace

December 12, 2024


“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:3)

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

On Sunday mornings, when I’m not filling the pulpit at First Baptist Church in Simla, Colorado, I’ll be in attendance at the morning worship service of Colorado Springs First Baptist. First, I teach the youth class of energetic middle and high schoolers, and then I go to the back row on the right side of the sanctuary for the 10:30 worship service.

I like the back row and, even more than that, the outside corner of the back row. It’s my place of peace. Sometimes, peace is a rare commodity in church. It’s like water in the midst of the Sahara. You value its existence whenever you’re able to find it.

Interestingly, churches are frequently places of chaos, tension, and conflict. People with life issues and unhappiness have a way of trying to overpopulate the boat with others who, after being dragged onto the Titanic, will proceed to sink the ship.

My back row spot is my place of contemplation, my calm amid the week’s tempests. A 95-year-old man sits in the pew in front of me. A young married couple relocated from Tennessee sits beside him. They did not know each other before the couple started attending, but they felt a bond of peace as they worshipped alongside one another.

In my four decades of pastoring, there was more than one Sunday when I could feel the tension in the sanctuary as I led worship. Some of those inner unrest moments were self-inflicted, and others resulted from people’s pet peeves or pettiness surfacing in a rash of anger on sour faces. Nowadays when I hear of church conflict and the unjustified things people do toward others, I shake my head.

My back-row seat is my sanctuary. I enjoy Pastor Dan’s messages, which are meaningful, thought-provoking, and absent of homiletical fluff. The music is superb without trying to turn the worship service into a concert, and the congregational care is evident.

From my refuge, my soul is stilled. Some churches pass the peace when there is no peace. I’m at peace in a place of peace with folk who are peace makers.

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Sunday Night Church and Ed Sullivan

October 26, 2024

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts…” (Acts 2:46)

Back in the really old days…like the late 50s and early 60s…my family’s Sunday routine was consistent: Sunday morning Sunday School and Worship, Sunday dinner (served instead of lunch), playing outside, and then getting in the car again for the drive to Sunday Night Worship. We were Southern Baptists, the lights aglow in the evening while the Methodists across the street stayed dark. Sunday nights at church were more relaxed. I didn’t have to wear my dorky bowtie or dress pants created to cause itching and torture. People seemed to be more engaged in light conversation and even laughed from time to time.

When we came home from church, my parents would turn on The Ed Sullivan Show, pop popcorn, and we’d gather in the living room. We’d laugh at Jonathan Winters, be amazed by some unique balancing act, and treat the performance of any vocalist as an opportunity to go to the bathroom.

It was family time, where we watched together, munched together, and talked together, Mom and Dad sitting on the only couch and the kids sprawled out on the floor.

Ed Sullivan has been gone for fifty years, passing away in 1974, while, in the meantime, “the family being together” has become a rare occurrence. Social networking, off as it sounds, has disconnected us; multiple streaming devices in the same household have separated us, and the disappearance of church gatherings has isolated us.

“Community” has been redefined as a chat room, a bowling league, and a gathering in a sports bar to watch the favorite sports team of a group of people who are all wearing team jerseys and/or hats.

“Community” in the first church in Jerusalem involved the weaving together of lives in sacrificial ways. They were a learning community, a sharing community, a prayerful community, and a serving community. Perhaps we can’t recover “community” to that point, but there’s got to be something more than a fellowship that rarely sees one another or a family that is staring into cell phones.

It’s disturbing that we, a nation of more than 350 million people, are more distant from one another than we’ve ever been.

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Lesser Things Than Good News

July 20, 2024

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” (Luke 15:31-32)

Church business meetings are a necessary evil. However, evil is frequently the dominant feature of the gathering of the saints, and the salt that can become salty. Instead of direction and vision, the meetings have a way of diminishing into an analysis of the finances, what is being spent to pay the staff, and how the church constitution and by-laws are not being followed.

Doing business has its place. The healthy church deals with the necessary business, trusts and empowers its shareholders and volunteers to minister and serve, and talks about what it looks like to be a church driven by the Good News, the gospel.

Honestly, I can’t remember many meetings where the main, consuming conversational point of the saints was Jesus’s good news. It makes me wonder if we’re so uncomfortable with the gospel that we focus on lesser things. Or you might call it “non-eternal business.”

The gospel takes in the hard-to-believe news that the unloveable are loved, the unforgivable are forgiven, and the unworthy are redeemed. It’s much more comfortable to talk about the lack of quality in the restroom toilet paper rolls and the sad state of the local high school football team.

I confess that there have been many times when I have detoured from the good news to a topic that doesn’t penetrate my heart. It’s easy to steer away from the love story of God to an event that will be forgotten in the next few minutes.

I think of the configuration of most evangelical church sanctuaries, where the pews or chairs are arranged to face toward the pulpit. It’s a visible picture of who we have entrusted the telling of the Good News to…the preacher. He or she has been trained and educated to tell God’s story, and we’re comfortable with that scenario or, maybe better said, it’s more convenient that way.

It seems that those most comfortable with talking about the gospel are those who were as far away as the prodigal son, realized their lostness, and then found their way back to the arms of the Father. It’s hard to continue to talk about the pastries being served when you’ve been eating the scraps that even the pigs didn’t want.

Finally, it’s uncomfortable to talk about a God Who operates out of grace when we’re dealing with our personal vindictiveness, a God of love when we can’t even stand the person sitting in front of us in worship, and a God Who forgives when we crave revenge and ill on our neighbors.

Lesser things monopolize our time and focus and crowd eternal matters out of the agenda. We don’t have to be religiously weird, but there is more to life than the Sunday sports lineup, even if your team is called the Angels or the Saints.

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Taking Christian Sides

April 20, 2024

Recently, a speaker at a church gathering made the statement in his address that a person couldn’t be a Christian and vote Democrat. He was adamant about that position in front of a crowd that was probably very lean in the number of Democrats present.

I cringed when I saw the video clip of it. It was a blanket statement, kinda like saying all public schools are demonic or moms who work outside of the home don’t make their kids a priority. In my growing-up days, people who drank beer were looked upon with suspicion by the teetotalers of our Baptist church. How could they drink Iron City beer on Saturday and come to church on Sunday?

We have a way of taking Christian sides, structuring our understanding of what a Christian looks like, and creating a long list of limitations on what isn’t acceptable. In essence, there’s a tendency to limit “who is in” instead of deferring to God’s grace. Like the private entrance to an exclusive club, it has become more the norm to admit only the sanitized rather than believe in a gospel where the doors are thrust wide open.

When asked to preach at a church that required everyone to use the King James Version of the Bible, seminary professor Dr. Al Bean would bring a bible with him that was in Greek and read the passage in the original Greek language. Consequently, he was never invited back to speak at the KJV congregations. He was viewed as having a rebellious spirit.

There is confusion in the Christian ranks over striving for a “sacred throng” versus creating an impenetrable fortress. We forget that the early followers of Jesus were a hodgepodge of outcasts and uninvited commoners, with a few well-to-do and greatly despised mixed in. The common thread, the unifying glue that brought them all together, was Jesus. His followers were as different as night and day, as different as a New York Democrat and a Texas Republican…as different as a corporate lawyer and a supermarket bagboy, but Jesus was the glue.

There is an increasing tendency these days to pull apart instead of holding together. What so often is held onto with a firm grip are the things and ideas that are way down the list in actual importance, while the most important, the things of eternal significance, get shoved out the door.

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Back Issues

April 11, 2024

“Even so, the body is not made up of one part but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12:14)

I have the mind of an 18-year-old but the back of a 70-year-old. Translated, that means I can do just about anything…run a marathon, climb Pike’s Peak, build a house…in my mind! In reality, I now can only run a marathon or climb Pike’s Peak if there happened to be a video game or a game app that would have features such as those things.

I could never build a house in any universe, regardless of my youthful mind.

Backs are touchy. They affect everything else that’s happening to you. The first thing in the morning, a back is like a wake-up call as you roll out of bed, reminding you that it’s still attached to you like a bad teenager’s pimple. As you bend to pick up a box, it’s whispering to you, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” As you begin to chuckle at something, Barney Fife does in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, it pinches you back to sensibility.

When a back gets out of whack, it’s not a quick fix to return to health. And the thing is, when you favor your back, it begins to take a toll on other parts of your body that are being relied on more than normal.

It’s not a mistake that “back” rhymes with “whack” and “quack.”

Churches with back issues have a long road to recovery. To be clear, I’m not talking about the wooden pews constructed in the 1800s with an extra dose of hardness pounded into the wood. I’m talking about a church with 10% of its members carrying 80% of the load. They are the ones that a church depends upon to the point of unhealthiness. Like the workers on a moving van, after a few years they have to start wearing special back protection braces to help them keep going. In the ministry of a church, the equivalent of a back brace is something that gets them through another week of overwhelming responsibilities, such as an event, thought pattern, or practice that is totally unconnected to the heavy load of ministry.

Many of the “back people” come to a point where they realize people see them as laborers for the church instead of servants of the Lord. The realization is crushing, and causes disillusionment and exit. Instead of seeing a path back towards health, they see a potholed road that is going to continue to jar and bring hurt to their lives.

On the other hand, the church needs “backs” but healthy backs. Backs that can be depended upon but not overtaxed. Backs that can not just sit around but also should have “carry limits.” They should be the lifters, not just laborers. Too many “backs” in the church are expected to take care of things and people but are seldom cared for by the rest of the Body. And so they wear out, rupture a disc, or experience day-by-day pain.

When Paul gave us the picture of the Body of Christ functioning like the human body, it communicated important principles and wise concepts. No part of the Body of Christ is less important than any other part. And… no part should be expected to be all things.

This 70-year-old still thinks young but is now wise enough to know I can’t do “young things.”

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