Terry Pruitt's Blog

I just finished reading the book Simple Church: Returning to God's Process For Making Disciples by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger. I have read quite a number of church growth and management books. This one follows the normal suite of taking modern business management techniques and applying it to the church management. In this case, product design is the current trend in business success thinking and is now applied to the church. It is keenly illustrated from the world of business and case studies from churches. The Scriptural justification for the principles in the book are in short supply. There is some use of Scripture, however, as many management books do, this book makes a heavy use of definitions, statistics, and case studies. The style is easy to read and gets the main points across easily. The basic idea is that churches that have a simple design of ministry empirically are shown to grow the most. The product is defined in the book as discipleship process. Chris...

Veils function in a variety of ways with people. It is usually a garment for women. Modern American brides wear a white veil as almost a bridal crown. Usually very little is hidden by the veil in this situation. A widow will wear a black veil to show just how sad she is and to hide the tears and puffy red nose. It works just the opposite of the bridal veil. The Arab veil is used as a way of segregating society. Women are only seen by other women and their close male relatives. Still this is a sort of hiding but one that is imposed by society. It is expected. When I was in California I attended Calvary Chapel Monterey Bay . Bill Holdridge was my pastor there but he has moved on to teach at a Bible College in Brazil . I loved Bill's preaching and I have tried to pattern my own preaching after his. Any way I do like his preaching and think that if he is teaching at a Bible College it is good thing to have someone of his caliber passing the torch to the next generation of e...

Ten Questions for Expositors - Keller is a post over at Unashamed Workman that is an interview with Pastor Tim Keller. The most striking thing he discusses in my opinion is how spending time with people is sermon preparation time.