How should congregations aiming to initiate or expand their social service programming go about doing so? We recently published The Arc of Faith-Based Initiatives (2018, Springer) and have both examined congregational social services for about two decades. Our research suggests four critical considerations. What’s your programming focus and will it fill a void? The field…
In South Africa churches may be among the last bastions of apartheid, but some churchgoers are crossing racial lines, for the sake of survival. Philippolis is a small farm town far away from everything. Far from the city and the government, far from justice and equality. The population is still divided and named — “Colored,”…
Multiracial congregations are all the rage, it seems, at least among Protestants. Conferences are being held across the country encouraging pastors and other religious leaders to be multiethnic, and groups like Mosaix and Kainos have been established to support the effort. People that attend these conferences are provided a theology for why more churches ought…
The Catholic Archbishop of southeastern Wisconsin, Jerome Listecki, issued a declaration shifting priorities within the archdiocese, according to an article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The declaration states that local bishops will work to support social justice issues that strongly affect minorities, including poverty, immigration, and gun violence.
The results from the 2015 version of the National Congregations Study (NCS) cover many topics, so this article limits the discussion of the changing religious landscape on five issues: “more ethnic diversity, more acceptance of gays and lesbians, increasingly informal worship styles, declining size (but not from the perspective of the average attendee), and declining denominational affiliation” (Chaves…