.
Here they are in order as I spot them...

Bill Kinnon shares Microsoft's decision to abandon PowerPoint:

Bill Gates announced today, that in spite of its popularity, Microsoft (MSFT) would be abandoning PowerPoint.... Gates made the announcement at a symposium put on in Seattle by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Eyeballs. Commenting at P.E.T.E yesterday, Gates stated,

Today, the LifeWay Communications Department put out their weekly "Lifelines," which is our employee newsletter at LifeWay. Since I am in the office today, I had a chance to see the issue. It is not available on-line, but this is the actual text (no April Fools "trick," just a little "treat").

Doing their jobs well, the communication folks edited my answers. But, since the newsletter came out today, and in the spirit of April Fools Day fun, I have added the original text back in underline/italic at the beginning or end of each question.

Unlike our staff at the LifeWay building, you get to read the rest of the story... grin.

I just talked to Todd and he passed this on to me (see release below). I will comment more on Todd and Alpha later, but now, I am off to interview Tim Keller for an upcoming podcast... More soon on both topics.

We need two workers at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana to assist the LifeWay Research team. We are looking for two energetic seminary students to work (for pay) Monday and Tuesday, June 9 and 10. One would work the hours of 9-5 and one is needed the hours of 10-8. Email research@lifeway.com for directions how to proceed if interested. You must be SBC and cannot have been anywhere near anything sinful in the last 6 months.

Leadership Journal provides an interesting interview with several well known pastors and leaders in "Biblical Authority & Today's Preacher." David Anderson, John M. Buchanan, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Tullian Tchividjian, and Rick Warren are interviewed (bios are in the article) along with earlier comments from Billy Graham.

You can read the article here. It summarizes points of agreement as:

A calling to preach. All the pastors interviewed for this article believe they have been divinely called to a ministry of proclaiming God's Word, and their calls have been affirmed by their faith communities.

Passion for God's word. All are clearly passionate about communicating the Word of God.

Pastors' hearts. Each person evidences a deep love for the people they serve and lead. All are committed to ministering in the context of community, not as lone rangers relying on their considerable communication gifts.

A sense of awe and responsibility for the pulpit. Just as athletes talk about "respecting the game," these leaders all have a high view of the preaching office, which is a great burden and responsibility.

I just talked with Roy Fish. For those of you who don't know Dr. Fish, you can refer back to one of my first blog posts here. On Tuesday he will be in survey for a hip replacement and will be hospitalized for at least five days. Please pray with me for his swift recovery.

A few weeks ago I created an account on Facebook. I find the whole concept intriguing.

Today, I have 23 friend requests. I confess I am not sure how people find you on Facebook, but after a couple of weeks of travel, I am planning to figure out more.

What is facinating to me is how diverse the people are who find you. On my list today:

David Fitch, author of the provacative book, The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies. David and I visited in Chicago and, I think, he gave me a copy there.

Today, I lectured at NOBTS and their partnered colleges.

It was a nice mix of students and faculty. I presented on the emerging church and then three faculty members critiqued my presentation. Much more on that later...

Right now I am at a St. Louis hotel.

Tomorrow, I am speaking to the leadership of "General Association of General Baptists." Some of you may not know that there are a whole bunch of Baptist denominations.

Wikipedia describes this group as:

General Association of General Baptists - a group of Baptists holding the general atonement (that Christ died for all persons), located mostly in the Midwestern United States.

This body has grown and developed until it now embraces about 60 associations, 816 churches and more than 73,000 members. The denominational headquarters are located in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where they operate Stinson Press. The official denominational publication is The General Baptist Messenger.

The General Association oversees publication of Sunday School literature, a home mission board, a foreign mission board, and the Oakland City University in Oakland City, Indiana. The General Association is a member of the National Association of Evangelicals and the Baptist World Alliance.

We just released a new research project.

Unchurched prefer cathedrals to contemporary church designs
by Tobin Perry

People who don’t go to church may be turned off by a recent trend toward more utilitarian church buildings. By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio over any other option, unchurched Americans prefer churches that look more like a medieval cathedral than what most think of as a more contemporary church building.

The findings come from a recent survey conducted by LifeWay Research for the Cornerstone Knowledge Network (CKN), a group of church-focused facilities development firms. The online survey included 1,684 unchurched adults – defined as those who had not attended a church, mosque or synagogue in the past six months except for religious holidays or special events.

"Despite billions being spent on church buildings, there was an overall decline in church attendance in the 1990s," according to Jim Couchenour, director of marketing and ministry services for Cogun, Inc., a founding member of CKN. "This led CKN to ask, ‘As church builders what can we do to help church leaders be more intentional about reaching people who don’t go to church?’"...

Stetzer suggested that the unchurched may prefer the more aesthetically pleasing look of the Gothic cathedral because it speaks to a connectedness to the past. Young unchurched people were particularly drawn to the Gothic look...

Stetzer noted that despite these survey results, most of the churches that look like a cathedral are in decline. Just because someone has a preference for the aesthetically pleasing, Gothic churches doesn’t mean they’ll visit the church if that’s the only connection point they have to the congregation, he said.

"Buildings don’t reach people, people do," Stetzer said...

Read the whole story here.

The Christian Post has the story here.

Some of the more insightful posts on the research:

From Ministry Today.

North American Churches

Chris Turner

On Saturday, I was speaking to the General Association of General Baptist Churches in a very rural part of Missouri.

The General Baptist denomination is an Arminian Baptist denomination. In many ways, they are similar to my own denomination, but they do not hold to the idea of "eternal security"-- or the idea that (in popular terms) once you are a believer you can't "undo" that. This view is held by Wesleyans, many Pentecostals, etc.

Over lunch, we reminsced a bit of the Second Great Awakening history.

Several Christian leaders at the upcoming "Heart Cry for Revival Conference" are asked and answer, "Why is revival needed among Christian leaders at this point in history?"

• John Avant: "We have become almost completely internalized. We have turned on each other and lost our way. Our churches often simply mirror our leaders. Beginning with me, we need a renewal of love, humility, holiness, and deep compassion for the lost."

• Nancy Leigh DeMoss: "As go the shepherds, so goes the flock. The church desperately needs leaders who are holy, Spirit-filled, prayerful, whole-hearted, anointed men of the Word and servants and lovers of Christ."

I wrote about my trip to the Fishing Hole here.

Marcus Bigelow (from Stadia) sent me his reflections from the prior evening. Good insights...

With updates on Coast Guard, Steve Lemke, Rodney Hammer, and Jack Allen.

Well, today I was at First Baptist Church of Alexandria finishing up a weekend Bible conference. It was good to meet their pastor, Don Davidson, and visit with old and new friends. More on that soon…

Visits like this get me in an "historical" state of mind. Those of you who follow the blog know of my interest in history-- particularly when referring to "firsts."

Before blogging, I have:

LifeWay Research recently completed a study of small churches. We have not released the data yet, but Brad Waggoner recently shared some early analysis from the study. He shared at Impact 2008 the biggest challenges reported by small churches:

This bibliography was developed by the library at the International Mission Board, and they have given me permisison to pass it on to you.

Last week, I had the chance to serve the chaplains serving the U.S. Coast Guard.

I have written in the past about my preparation for this speaking engagement.

The Coast Guard news explained the event:

As I have mentioned before, my former co-pastor Philip Nation and I have written a new book concerning missional living entitled Compelled by Love.

Our hope for the book is that it will help you push the idea of missional from being a leadership paradigm to a way of life for the people in your church.

The book is written from the perspective of love being a primary ethic for missional living. Ultimately, God’s glory is the ethic and motivation for all we do. And the church being as loving as her Lord will propel us onto his missional work of redemption and care for humanity.

This morning, David Putman announced the release of his new book, Breaking the Discipleship Code. I wrote the foreword to the book and thought I should share it with you:

In a few days we will be heading to Orlando for the mother of all church planting conferences, the Exponential Conference.

I will be leading a pre-conference session on Monday and here is the lineup I have planned:

I know it would be alliterated if it said, "Friday is for Friends." However, I am always behind a couple of days. Here are a few friends, new and old, from the last week.

David Dockery and Union University

I heard from David this week. He is president of Union University. I have written before about Union and its recent tornado damage.

I have spent all day in Orlando with the leadership of over a dozen different denominations in Orlando.

Today, I announced new research we are planning on church planting assessment and other topics. We also heard from three speakers today.

Stephen Gray talked about planting fast growing churches based on his research. He has written Planting Fast Growing Churches.

Ron Sylvia of the NEXT Initiative talked about creating coaching networks. He has written a book called Starting Churches on Purpose.

Tom Clegg of CoachNet talked about coaching networks. He has written a book called Missing in America.

Tomorrow, we will hear from Mark Reynolds from the Redeemer Church Planting Center. I will also share some research from best practice analysis.

More soon...

We just released some new evangelism research. You can find the full story here. Here are some excerpts from the article.

Unchurched adults interested in finding a congregation aren’t nearly as likely to visit one in person as a church member who is shopping for a new congregation. That means effective evangelism must begin outside the sanctuary in relationships between Christians and unbelievers, according to research from several recent studies from LifeWay Research...

"The location of our evangelism needs to shift if we want to reach the unchurched and not just move sheep around," said Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research. "At LifeWay Research we want to encourage churches to grow through conversion. To do that, they must not rely only of the unchurched visiting our churches. Church switchers are primarily the ones who visit churches. The unchurched stay home...

Click here for the news release.

Here is my commentary:

The End of the Beginning?

This chart has brought solace to many Southern Baptists for a long time:

(for a full size version click here.)

It shouldn't, really.

I made mistake of telling all 2600 of you that I would post some resources here yesterday. Well, in the meantime, our new evangelism research was released and then some very important news for my denomination was released. Please forgive the delay and I will have it posted before you leave the conference tomorrow night.

Tim Keller and I talked about his new book, The Reason for God, and some recently released research (see here).

You can listen to the podcast here and read the story here. Here are some excerpts from the story released today:

At each of my sessions at the Exponential Conference, I promised to share my PowerPoint and other resources with the attendees. Then, things got a bit backed up as we released some evangelism research, some SBC denominational commentary, and then an interview with Tim Keller.

Well, here are the promised PowerPoints and research. If anything is missing, please let me know below and I will respond as soon as I can. Tomorrow I will be in Springfield, MO with the North American mission and discipleship departments of the Assemblies of God and I will be unavailable.

First, the research I presented at the opening session on reproducing churches is here.

I am on my way to New York City as I write this (plane delayed as usual).

It will be a busy week, assuming Al Sharpton does not succeed in his promise to shut down the city.

From Drudge:

Monday, I meet all day with the leaders of a denomination called the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Canada.

Monday night, it is off to dinner with Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and our wives. It should be a good time. (And, I always enjoy it when Donna can join me on trips.)

Tuesday, I speak on the “Mission and the Kingdom of God” at dwell. I will also be staying around to hear some of the other speakers. The lineup is pretty impressive: Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, CJ Mahaney, Darrin Patrick, and Eric Mason.

Wednesday, I will be speaking to the staff of The Journey. Nelson Searcy planted the church several years ago and has recently written a new church planting book, called Launch.

In between, I plan to have a great time with my wife and will be far from my computer. However, I will post another SBC related blog on Monday.

One of the big questions is this: is the 2007 SBC membership decline a “blip” or a trend. The news story does not say. However, in my commentary, I imply it is.

Here is why.

As the graph below illustrates, the SBC has had a growing membership count for decades, but only marginal growth since 2000. From 2000 through 2006, the growth has been close to a plateau, registering .68, .58, .53, .42, .39, .02 and .22 percent respectively. You can graph those years pretty easily and see the trend. Not surprisingly, this year we declined.

Some have said this is the first membership decline ever. That is not true. There was one in 1998 and there have been others decades before. However, I believe this time is different. I believe that, unless we have a significant intervention, we have peaked, at least in regards to membership.

As this graph from my earlier post demonstrates, we saw a decline of 1.02% in 1998, much larger than the 0.24% decline in 2007. (Look closely at the graph below.) As argument goes, if we recovered then, we can do so now as well.

(for a full size version click here.)

Probably not (and I use that word “probably” very intentionally).

Thom Rainer explained:

Although we pray God will bring revival and change, the trajectory is not positive. If current trends don't change, it seems we are about to enter a period of declining membership.

Why does Thom Rainer say such a thing?

Well, he has seen this:

Click here for a full sized version.

Cliff Tharp prepared it for us on Thursday. As the graph in percent change above demonstrates, our year-to-year growth has been in a constant trended decline, not for one year, but for decades—this is not a one year blip, this is a 50 year trend.

Monday:

Had a great day with a group of pastors from the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Canada. Tonight was dinner on the lower East Side with a group of folks, but closest to me was my wife, Donna, Tim and Cathy Keller, Tullian Tchividjian, Matt Chandler, Ed Marcelle. I will have much more to blog later, but I still have not blogged about last week, so check back soon!

--------------------------------------------
Updated Tuesday afternoon:'

Had a great morning listening to C.J. Mahaney talk about "Watching Your Life and Doctrine. I have listened to C.J. for decades. A a teenager, I remember hearing him speak at "Jesus" Festivals," a mix of Christian rock and teaching. He had a great impact on my life 25 years ago and it is good to see him still at it now.

I spoke on "Dwelling in the Kingdom Mission" and gave away our new book, Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living (more book info here). I think they are planning to post the audio and I will link it here when they do.

A couple of people asked me to link to the the book I mentioned in my presentation. It was The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective, by Russell Moore. I believe it is a significant book describing the emerging evangelical consensus on the Kingdom of God.

Eric Mason talked last, but certainly not least. He spoke on "Dwelling Incarnationally" with passion and a life that back it up.

The afternoon is a NYC experience with a series of options. (I chose the option of hanging out with Donna.) Tonight, we hear Mark Driscoll.

Tomorrow, it is Tim Keller.