Things on my mind in various stages of thought development.
This is the second in a series of posts on a model for administering independent churches. My previous post described the problem that independent churches face in their governance structures. Briefly, we want financial management, etc., to be the responsibility of deacons, but under many current structures for administering churches, the responsibility must be taken […]
This is the first in a series of posts on a model for administering independent churches. Before we go on describing what the model is like, I will need to explain what I mean by an independent church, and why a different model may be useful. What is an independent church? By independent church I […]
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here. That’s because I had, until now, nothing much useful to say. (Plus the fact I was writing reports and Board papers at work all the time, which diminished my enthusiasm for writing.) Anyway, I’ve been mulling over the idea of a model for administering independent churches […]
Our congregation has an “unofficial” policy of vetting the lyrics of songs before admitting them for use in services. In general, we look at almost every song, regardless of source, and assess each on its own merits. I thought it would be useful to share the things I think about when I am asked to […]
For some reason, whenever I talk to people about ministry, the discussion often ventures into “ministry platforms”. I think I have been saying the same thing enough times for me put it down in writing, so that hopefully I don’t have to repeat myself as much. So, here is a FAQ. Nothing here is particularly […]
Much has been made about gospel partnerships which reach out to a specific group of people. In these gospel partnerships, we have people from many different local churches gather together for a common cause—-to proclaim the gospel to this particular group. This allows them to tailor the way the gospel is delivered to suit this […]
As Andrew Hong noted a few months back, developers of new residential developments in the outer suburbs of major cities don’t have much room for church buildings. There simply isn’t sufficient financial incentive for developers or local planners to put aside large blocks of land for church buildings. While there will probably be generic community […]
The title of this article may sound scary, but hopefully it’s not that so. One of the many discoveries from the field of behavioural economics is the concept of hyperbolic discounting. Hyperbolic discounting occurs when someone chooses a smaller payoff sooner rather than a much larger payoff later, but would reverse that choice if the […]
Recently at the 2007 Biennial Convention of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia, there was a fascinating paper presented on the changing nature of the workforce. The paper, titled It’s time to abolish retirement (and here’s how to do it), looks at retirement (for recreation) as being a relatively recent phenomenon. It argues that given […]
If you have been following the news, you probably have heard of various political parties announcing enquiries into petrol prices and grocery prices. While clearly it would be interesting to see what (if anything) transpires out of these enquiries, it is instructive to consider the economics of the situation. Consider the following observations. For many […]