Author Archives: Jay F Guin

Continuing to reflect on Thom Rainer’s 14 Predictions for 2014, Part 1 and Part 2. 12. Local churches increasing their roles as ministry training leaders. The role of ministry training in the past decades fell largely upon Bible colleges and seminaries. More … Continue reading →

Continuing to reflect on Thom Rainer’s 14 Predictions for 2014, Part 1 and Part 2. 9. New worship centers will be built smaller. There will be a greater emphasis on smaller gatherings more frequently. This trend is being affected significantly by the … Continue reading →

Larry Creek asked me in a comment, [1] I have not found many that have expounded upon how those who left Jerusalem to go back home lived the same guidelines for their worship gatherings as have been evidenced in the … Continue reading →

Continuing to reflect on Thom Rainer’s 14 Predictions for 2014, Part 1 and Part 2. 5. Greater number of churches moving to a unified worship style. For years a noticeable trend was churches offering different worship styles. The most common was the … Continue reading →

In Part 1, I wrote, The Churches of Christ have very few [megachurches], largely because … [among other reasons] … we have doctrinal barriers that make it difficult for a church to grow large, including our rejection of instrumental music. … Continue reading →

I read Thom Rainer’s blog, but I’ve been reading his work since before there were blogs. Rainer is a church growth consultant who has written several influential books. He is one of the few who studies the research and really … Continue reading →

I’m a longtime advocate for elder training, and one of the few formal training opportunities found in the Churches of Christ is the ElderLink program jointly sponsored by Abilene Christian University and Lipscomb University.

What do Tuscaloosans do when it snows enough to build snowmen and have snowball fights? Build snow elephants on the UA Quad!