Today’s Buzz:  Rock Star or Worship Leader; Southern Baptist Drinkers; Effective Pastors and more…

Orginally published on Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 7:30 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Know what the nation's fastest growing website is? How about what 77% of Southern Baptist pastors think about alcohol? And whodathunk that Thomas Road could be outdone? Those are just some of the answers you'll find when you read today's buzz...

Rock Star or Worship Leader
Bob Kauflin has a great piece over at WorshipMatters where he compares worship leaders with Bruce Springsteen.  Bob writes, “Hearing Springsteen talk about why he does what he does made me freshly aware of how different leading corporate worship is from being a rock star, even though at times the line can be blurred, both in our culture and in our hearts. Here are a few of the distinctions...” Read them here.

Southern Baptists:  Don’t Drink
So… I was out at the local pub last week tipping a few back with my good buddy Ed Stetzer as he was telling me about some new research he has done on alcohol opinions of Southern Baptists.  It seems that a majority of Southern Baptist senior pastors and laity believe Christians should not drink alcohol and that using it could cause other believers to stumble.  Among Southern Baptists, 77 percent of senior pastors and 59 percent of laity believe “Christians should not use alcohol as a beverage.” Those percentages fall, though, when Southern Baptists are asked whether “Scripture indicates that people should never drink” alcohol. Forty-one percent of SBC pastors agreed with that statement, while 34 percent of Southern Baptist laity did.  Those percentages are higher than they are among non-Southern Baptist Protestants. For example, 45 percent of non-Southern Baptist pastors and 45 percent of non-Southern Baptist laity believe Christians should not use alcohol as a beverage.  You can read the study here. And oh, by the way, the story about Ed and me out drinking was totally fiction.  And more here... (I chose the picture because I just imagine if a Southern Baptist would drink, they would probably drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, or maybe Rolling Rock).

The Linked Word Project
OK… it’s from Bob Jones University, and its in KJV only, but it looks like it could be a valuable tool for many.  Check it out here.

GodTube is the Nation’s Fastest Growing Website
Drawing close to 2 million unique visitors over the past month, GodTube.com not only became the nation’s fastest-growing Web property in August, according to ComScore’s Media Metrix.  Last week, GodTube also attempted to boost its appeal by adding social networking to the list of services that already include user-generated and live webcasting. While there already exists other Christian websites with similar offerings (dittytalk.com, videopile.com, mychurch.org, xianz.com), GodTube.com is the first to offer all three services.  More here.

Sorry, Thomas Road, You’ve been Outdone...
Got an email from Gilbert Thurston yesterday.  Gilbert wrote:  “Hate to play keeping up with the Jones (or in this case, the Thomas Roads), but we are finishing up a series this weekend where we had a fully functioning 18 ft. high iPod.  You can check out a picture on my blog and you can see the intro videos to the messages on our site as well.” Great job, Gilbert… but someone out there has to have a 20 ft. iPod sitting on stage, don’t you?!

15 Characteristics of Effective Pastors
This new book looks interesting:  What are the basic and common characteristics necessary for pastors to be effective? How can lay people understand the pastoral call more fully and partner better with pastors for the health of their church? Here Kevin Mannoia and Larry Walkemeyer examine the foundations of pastoral effectiveness and bring together nine experienced pastoral leaders to discuss the basic characteristics that exist in effective pastors. Regardless of context or personality, ineffectiveness in pastors and subsequent ill health in churches is often not the result of a lack of calling, but instead is the result of misappropriated efforts to find success. You can check it out here...

Have a great day!

Todd

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