Category Archives: Sunday School

Is Sunday School Dead?

By Mike James | Published: January 20, 2012

I read an interesting article last week by Bob Allen called, “Can Sunday School be saved?” The title of the article caught my attention for two reasons.  One, I have been greatly impacted by Godly Sunday School teachers who loved me and made a huge difference in my life and two, if it is lost can it [...]

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Closing the Back Door

By Mike James | Published: November 7, 2011

I recently met with a church that was having consistent baptisms but not experiencing net growth. They asked me to help them plan some strategies that would keep those they reached. About the same time I read Tom Rainer’s blog on “closing the back door.” How does a church keep those it reaches so they [...]

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Church Vitality Components

By Mike James | Published: September 27, 2010

Audrey Barrick writing for the Christian Post reported an interesting new study by the United Methodist Church on what makes some churches healthy. Here are the key findings in that study. Churches with a high number of small groups, effective lay leadership, faithful pastors, and both traditional and contemporary services tend to be the healthiest. [...]

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Nine Habits of Churches that Reach and Keep People part 2

By Mike James | Published: April 13, 2009

In my last blog we talked about the first four of these nine habits for reaching and keeping people based on research by Dr. Thom Rainer.  They were…Habit of Intentionality, Habit of Cultural Awareness, Habit of High Expectations, and the Habit of Clear Doctrine.  Here are the remaining five with a few brief comments by [...]

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Farewell

By Steve Rice | Published: October 16, 2008

Today I say farewell as the writer of 28Nineteen. On November 2, 2008, I will assume the Senior Pastor position at the First Baptist Church of Shelbyville, Kentucky. My family and I are very excited about our new assignment from the Lord. Read about our move in this Kentucky Baptist Convention article or this Western [...]

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Rainer’s Four Legs of Assimilation

By Steve Rice | Published: July 31, 2008

When Dr. Tom Rainer served as Dean of the Billy Graham School at Southern Seminary in Louisville, he ran a consulting company that helped churches across America. In his consultations, he discovered that the overwhelming majority of the churches needed marked improvement in the area of assimilation. As a result, he began to teach about [...]

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Get Lost, Part 2

By Steve Rice | Published: July 23, 2008

Yesterday, I shared part of an article from David Francis, LifeWay Director of Sunday School. In the article he takes a humorous approach to the topic of assimilation by talking about ways to make guests feel unwelcome. Instead of discussing ways to attract and keep guests, he lists ways to make guests want to leave the [...]

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Get Lost, Part 1

By Steve Rice | Published: July 22, 2008

I recently read the an article from David Francis, LifeWay Director of Sunday School. In the article he took a reverse approach to the topic at hand. Instead of talking about ways to make guests feel welcome, he listed ways to make guests feel unwelcome and not return to the church. Of course, we should actually [...]

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The Power of Sunday School

By Steve Rice | Published: June 12, 2008

Robert Raikes is known to be the father of the Sunday School movement. He believed that education was an effective tool to battle moral decline and determined to develop an experimental school to test his theory. Initially, he was legally barred from developing the school until England passed the Enabling Act in 1779. In 1780 [...]

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Don’t Miss Gary McIntosh

By Steve Rice | Published: May 18, 2008

This Thursday, May 22, Dr. Gary McIntosh will be with us at the Kentucky Baptist Convention building. He will talk about assimilation principles taken from his book, Beyond the First Visit, along with other books he has written. Check out the well-written Western Recorder article on this upcoming event. Dr. McIntosh is a consultant, author, [...]

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