Article: How to Kill a Programmatic Church

At a recent denominational conference, I found myself at a round table with 12 other ministers. In typical introductory fashion we went around the table saying our name, title, church location — and as the first minister added unprompted — our congregation’s size. While the titles, locations and numbers began to fly, I got bored and allowed my mind to wander; turning to a colleague, we engaged an interesting question: “how can we kill the programmatic church?”

Full Article

Article: Reforming or Reverting?

Reforming or Reverting?

By Wes Barry

June 2012

The god of the innovative is hard to resist. While this issue of Reformed Worship encourages us all to pay attention to how multiple intelligences and multiple learning styles inform worship planning, we need to do so with thought and discernment. This article causes us to pause and to take the time to think about what we do in our worship. Nothing is value-neutral.
-JB

One Sunday I worshiped at a large Reformed megachurch in town. Even though there was no altar, and the preacher certainly did not speak Latin, it felt as if I had returned to a time before the Reformation.

Perhaps it is hard to understand how a service that incorporates jumbo-size screens, electric guitars, and a fog machine might be similar to a service in the fifteenth century. But some of the same impulses and philosophies that so concerned the Reformers were being incorporated into the megachurch service...

READ the Full Article:  CLICK HERE

Tweet

Article: Wikiterian

Written by Wes Barry, published in The Presbyterian Outlook,Tuesday, 25 January 2011 18:55.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may want to take note of a phenomenon occurring online. What if the Presbyterian Church took a page — a Web page — from Wikipedia?

Click here to read more

Article: Artmaking

As a Reformed theologian, I agree that all art is frivolous; however, as an 

artist, I believe that the process of artmaking is never frivolous. Whether or not 

the artist intentionally creates a religious piece, by creating, the artist is invited to 

imitate the God of all creation: 

In the beginning was creativity, 

and the creativity was with God, 

and the creativity was God. 

All things came into being through the mystery of creativity; 

apart from creativity nothing would have come into being.1 

read the full article here (page 95)