YOU ARE THE LIGHT! Experience Transformational Spirituality and Discover the Divine Within

Attendance in US churches continues to sharply decline. As church leaders struggle to identify both root causes and possible responses, they often feel a sense of despair... but there is hope!

Our 2020 updated version of the 8 Points of progressive Christianity

“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.

How do churches build immunity from racial and ethnic tensions that threaten to divide rather than unite congregations? Jacqui Lewis and John Janka believe that the answer lies in the development of multiracial, multicultural communities of faith.

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*** This page has moved - please click here to Order Hard Copy and DVD. To see all Purchase Options Please Click Here.

Here I offer a church "adult study" that can be completed in one after-worship program, or expanded to multiple sessions. It focuses on one of the most important issues facing voters in the upcoming midterm elections. Use as you wish! And please give me feedback on how you use it and how it is received.

Remember that resurrection is more than mere resuscitation! It is life transformed! It is faith in possibilities, when others are convinced of inevitability.

In May 2017, people from all over the world will gather in Portland, Oregon to share knowledge and wisdom, learn from each other, celebrate, be inspired, and find the tools needed to create and enliven local movements within our communities. Together we will explore sacred oneness, Christ consciousness, eco-spirituality, social justice and the way of universal and personal transformation that honors the Divine in all.

"Love the sinner, but hate the sin." This phrase has been used countless times by some Christians to pretend to offer welcome to LGBT people while condemning the natural consequence of the way God made them. It speaks for a shallow kind of love at most: one that claims to be okay with a person's same-sex orientation while stigmatizing its fulfillment. This noxious phrase also summarizes the underlying attitude of many people of other religions towards sexual minorities. It is a phrase whose time has come - and gone. More than ever, it needs to be excised from the vocabulary of faith, once and for all, as it pertains to homosexuality.

In the church world, you need to know what is and isn’t working. You need metrics. You can’t just keep doing what you enjoy doing if no one is “buying” it, or continue what worked a decade ago without asking whether it is working today.

Worship is a 'receipt' given to God in return for the divine gifts of life which we receive.... It is an artful response to our awe and wonderment at the miracle of creation which surrounds us.....

The SALT Project is a not-for-profit project committed to creating beautiful and theologically interesting church media!

If "touches" are the many thousands whom your church touches in any way, "prospects" are touches whom you stimulate to take some interest in who you are as a faith community and what you do, especially in mission and ministering to people. Take it as a given that, at this point, they aren't the least interested in how you worship, the traditions you observe, who presides at your altar, the quality of your facilities, or your history. If that's all you have to tell them, you are lost.

A day did exist when a church could grow and thrive by opening its doors on Sunday and welcoming whoever arrived. Knowing how to welcome regulars and visitors was as much evangelism as a congregation needed to do. That day ended long ago. Nowadays, most churches don’t have enough visitors to offset the inevitable attrition that happens when people die, move out of town, or lose interest. And “regular attendance” now means one or two Sundays a month, not three or four.

An aging Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD returns to Da Nang after 50 years in order to try to do something for those still afflicted generations later by the lingering toxic affects of Agent Orange. His nagging conscience leads to a redemptive act of self-healing and a common good. Spirituality is often an amorphous and bandied about term that too often connotes the merely religious type, as somehow distinct from those who are not. Instead, I appreciate something as equally shared as it is often neglected, namely the human conscience and our sometimes-belated conscious awareness of it.

No longer can congregations focus all of their energies on Sunday morning worship. They can’t just open the door on Sunday and expect people to walk through. The flow of visitors isn’t enough to compensate for attrition, and people’s needs are too varied.

“Faith Fight”—that’s what the local news is calling it. Eight churches in Fountain Hills, Arizona, led by the Rev. Bill Good, pastor of

I am coming to see that the hardest work facing a church isn't finances, facilities or failing programs. The hardest problem is trying to be multi-generational. That is, trying to nurture a congregation that embraces the elderly, active retirees, middle-aged persons, young adults, youth and children in one fellowship.

Since starting to attend the Episcopal Church nearest to our new home in Upstate New York, I have learned five real-world lessons about membership development.

The film tells the story about Mayflower United Church of Christ’s work to become carbon neutral by 2030. It offers powerful insights into what it takes to move a community into a more harmonious relationship with the natural world.

Incremental steps are where the transformed life occurs. One wholesome meal, followed by another. One time of choosing family first. One act of kindness. One act of self-restraint in the face of provocation. One assignment done carefully.

This has been difficult terrain for many years now. Giving throughout mainline Protestantism has been in free-fall for at least thirty years, and is proving to be challenging even in evangelical traditions that supposedly teach the tithe.