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Church Growth Church Planting Ecclesiology Leadership Leading change Will Willimon

Thoughts on closing a church with declining attendance

Thread below on the story that made the rounds yesterday: "Cottage Grove church to usher out gray-haired members in effort to attract more young parishioners."

First thread:

https://twitter.com/AndyRowell/status/1220057235432210432

 

Last thread: 

https://twitter.com/AndyRowell/status/1220058532289994752

 

PDF of thread: 

Download Usher out gray-haired members

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Books Will Willimon

Books I’m Reading in March 2010

BOOKS I'M READING (MARCH 2010)

  • William H. Willimon: Conversations with Barth on Preaching

    William H. Willimon: Conversations with Barth on Preaching
    This is the most academically rigorous of all Willimon's books and reflects deeply on what we should get from Barth and what we should press him about.

  • James William McClendon, Jr.: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Ethics

    James William McClendon, Jr.: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Ethics
    After Barth, Bonhoeffer, Yoder, MacIntyre, Newbigin, and Hauerwas and Volf, I am now enjoying working through the three volumes by baptist theologian McClendon (1924-2000). The Christian Century obituary includes these statements, A widely admired theologian with Southern Baptist roots, one who moved comfortably in ecumenical circles, had the pleasure of viewing a finished copy of the third and final volume of his life work, Systematic Theology, shortly before his death at age 76. James William McClendon Jr. died on October 30 at his home near Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he was distinguished scholar-in-residence for the past ten years. "He saw the book just before he lost consciousness," said wife Nancey Murphy, professor of theology at Fuller . . . Theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School said McClendon's three volumes–titled Ethics, Doctrine and Witness, in that sequence–"will acquire increasing significance and regard" among theologians. "It's the first presentation of what a theology would look like that takes very seriously the work of [the late] John Howard Yoder," he said. See also the fascinating profile of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. by Michael L. Westmoreland-White.

  • George Eliot: Middlemarch

    George Eliot: Middlemarch
    Eugene Peterson has said about it, "The tangle of spiritual intimacy and vocational pride that is the worm in the apple of the Christian life is diagnostically narrated here in an unforgettable story." This week Alan Jacobs highlights Rebecca Mead's comment that "Sometimes I feel as if everything that is worth knowing about love and marriage (and maybe about everything else, too) can be learned from reading Middlemarch.”

Categories
Pastor's Life Preaching Will Willimon

Will Willimon on intellectual curiosity, theology, preaching and communion

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to meet Will Willimon today.  Probably everyone who reads my blog has their own pastor/scholar heroes.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lesslie Newbigin, Eugene Peterson, and Will Willimon are some of mine. 

Today I had the opportunity to hear him interact with some Duke
Divinity School students in Ken Carder’s Introduction to Christian
Ministry course (of which I served as the Teaching Assistant last
year). 

Here were three of my favorite ideas Willimon shared today:

  1. “As a pastor, it helps to be an intellectual. Amidst the ordinary, getting excited about ideas helps.”
  2. “By
    their 50’s, pastors need theologians. Ministry is too dangerous, too
    peculiarly demanding. At that point, you need more than just liking
    people.”
  3. “Some biblical texts are all gospel or all law. I preach them in their onesidedness and then let communion balance it out.”

Willimon was Dean of Duke Chapel for 20 years and had now been a United Methodist Church bishop in Alabama for five years. He blogs at http://willimon.blogspot.com/ and has two new books out. 

Product Details

The Early Preaching of Karl Barth: Fourteen Sermons with Commentary by William H. Willimon by Karl Barth and William Willimon (Paperback – Sep 2, 2009)

Product Details

Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh by William H. Willimon (Paperback – Oct 2009)

See also Bishop Willimon’s Podcast — The iTunes link will only work if you have iTunes, which is free program that works on PC’s and Macs, installed on your computer.