A few weeks ago I got connected with the leadership team of the Luasanne Movement. The group dates back to 1974 when Billy Graham and John Stott brought church leaders from around the world to Luasanne, Switzerland, for a “congress” on world missions. Another Luasanne Congress occured in 1989 in Manila. A thrid gathering is now set for Cape Town, South Africa, in October 2010. It will include over 4000 leaders from over 200 countrie–the largest, most diverse gathering of Christian leaders in history. And for the first time more than half of the delagates will be from the Majority World.

As I move toward greater involvement with the efforts to organize Cape Town 2010, I’ve finally picked up a book that’s been on my desk for some time–Mark…

This story comes from Change.org:In 2007, a case of crucifixes purchased by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York was traced back to a factory in China where girls as young as 15 were forced to work up to 19-hour days, seven days a week.  Today, Christian items from bible covers to t-shirts are being made in factories which abuse and traffic workers.  And some Christians are standing up and refusing to stand for slavery.The Just Holy Hardware Campaign has launched this week as part of a movement to end slavery, especially slavery of children, in the production of religious items.  The initiative, based in Australia, aims to provide religious organizations with paraphernalia made under fair labor conditions, with a “no-slavery” guarantee. Sr. Pauline Coll, a representative on the national executive of Australian Catholic Religious…

Last year during the presidential campaign, an interesting trend was observed. The Christian segment of the population once believed to be a monolithic voting block turned out to have more diversity of thought and opinion than previously believed. The hold of the Religious Right, Christian Coalition, and other GOP-leaning groups over the evangelical brand started to loosen.What emerged was a new, generally younger, more urban, and less politically idealistic group of Christian voters. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power, refers to them as “Cosmopolitan Evangelicals.” According to Lindsay they have the following characteristics:● They reject signifiers of “populist” Christianity such as the Left Behind books and Thomas Kinkaide paintings.● They are less involved in local churches, but highly involved with parachurch organizations.● They may not…

I know Eric Bryant through our participation together with the Origins Project. On his blog, Eric has been doing a series of teleseminars with church leaders and thinkers. On June 1 (3-4pm Central) he will be interviewing me live about The Divine Commodity. The teleseminar is free, but you need to sign up in advance to participate.

SIGN UP HERE for this free, live teleseminar.  

Eric’s teleseminars are similar to conference calls where you can dail in and listen/interact live, or you may listen online via live streaming audio. By signing up you can also submit questions to Eric and me to answer during the call. Check out other recent teleseminars on Eric’s blog.

In my last post I discussed the belief that singleness is leading to a decline in church attendance. Traditional marriage defendants like Al Mohler believe that if more Christians would marry at a younger age they would not only “grow up” faster, but they’d also realize how important the local church is for their lives.Let’s take that logic one (big) step further. Today NPR featured a piece on the Quiverfull movement. These are conservative Christians who do not practice any form of birth control. They find biblical justification in Psalm 127:

“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”

The belief that children are a blessing from God is a wonderful doctrine of Christianity. And…

Two weeks ago the American Religious Identification Survey [ARIS] released its findings and announced that “secular” Americans now account for 15 percent of the population. That is up from 8 percent in 1990 and just 2 percent in 1962. Among the young the trend is even higher. Only 25 percent of people between 21 and 45 years old regularly attend church. Who is responsible for this dramatic downturn in commitment to church attendance? According to Al Mohler there are two culprits: the government and single adults.

In a blog post from March 19, Al Mohler discusses a column in The Wall Street Journal by W. Bradford Wilcox who believes “the expansion of the government sector to offer cradle-to-grave social services contributes to the secularization of society.” According to Wilcox, and Mohler…

Some of you might be aware that I am part of an upstart network of church leaders. The team currently includes Dan Kimball, Josh Fox, Dave Gibbons, John Park, Erwin McManus, Eric Bryant, Scot McKnight, Rick McKinley, Margaret Feinberg, Mark Batterson, Naeem Fazal, and myself. We had our first gathering last month in San Diego to dream about what this community should become.

The group has been using Mosiac’s Origins Project as a starting base, but we realize the network needs it’s own name and digital home. Over 600 people have registered for the network through the Origins Project website, and now we’re asking everyone for help brainstorming a new name and focus for the group. Dan Kimball sent out an email update last week, and everyone on the…

I just returned from two days in Las Vegas. Brandon O’Brien, Leadership’s assistant editor, and I were there to interview Craig Gross. Craig is the guy who started XXXChurch.com seven years ago. In 2008 he relocated his family and a dozen other people to Las Vegas to launch The Strip Church. (There’s a great NightLine video on the site you should see.)

We interviewed Craig about what it means to be a church and engage God’s mission in a culture of growing addictions and vices. The article will appear in the spring issue of Leadership due out in April. Craig’s vision is essentially to create a short-term missions project where churches from around the country send teams of people to Las Vegas to reach out at the many trade conventions.…