John Louk

Scripture counsels us to take heed of those who are good at what they do. Within the Book of Proverbs, there are “thirty sayings of the wise.” One of them urges, “Observe people who are good at their work—skilled workers are always in demand and admired” (23:29 The Message) . Shane Bishop is the Senior Pastor of Christ Church, a United Methodist congregation in Fairview Heights, Illinois. Christ Church was recognized as one of the 100 fastest growing churches in the United States for 2018. Their weekend worship attendance has increased from 200 to over 2,500 since Shane’s appointment in 1997 and has grown for twenty-two consecutive years. Shane was named A Distinguished Evangelist of the United Methodist Church in 2010 . Shane answers the question about how to grow the church with a simple formula: 1) Make new Christians; 2) Turn new Christians into disciples; and 3) Send those disciples out to make new Christians. He says the recipe is two parts evangelism and one part discipl...

This may be hard to hear. Salem has a crisis. I know that’s a strong word, but it’s accurate. This truly is a time of difficulty and danger. It’s also a time of great opportunity. Salem is down to just eight children in Sunday school. We have a crisis in our children’s ministry. That’s not to say we don’t have great leaders and teachers. We do. Rather, this is a symptom of something larger, something we’ve known for a long time in our culture. We are losing our young families, and we’re not reaching new young families either or younger persons in general. This decline is most prevalent in mainline denominational congregations like The United Methodist Church (and the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.). Two years ago, the Washington Post reported that if we don’t stop this, mainline Protestantism only has 23 Easters left . One significant reason for this decline was discovered in the 1970s. Many adolescents and teenagers who were confirmed in the 1960s began dropp...