Why Standards Matter, Or:Are Churches Too Needy for Bodies?
I'm still in a bit of a "post 9/11 10th anniversary remembrance funk", so I watched a DVD that came with a recently arrived book, What We Saw . In this film from a book that includes text and images from CBS News' coverage of the events of that day, I watched the managing partner of a financial firm tell how he survived losing over a third of his staff that day. He said was was determined to have "a high threshold for the small stuff." That's what enabled him to begin the process of healing and rebuilding his firm. I was a part of a conversation about what many "traditional, mainline denominational churches" are going to do in the next five to ten years regarding their declining (and aging) memberships. As a famed Russian revolutionary once wrote: " What is to be done? " One thing that must be done is for those who want to attract new members to lose their sense of neediness, the sense that "bodies at all cost" will sol...