Skye and Christian are back to join Phil for this week’s podcast. They talk about Phil’s trip to the International Christian Retail Show, the current state of Christian retail and how most Christian companies are subsidiaries of large secular ones. They discuss the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado and the NCAA punishments for Penn State. The crew also responds to questions from the podcast on dreams and calling.

If you have comments or questions for Phil, Christian, & Skye you can post them here in the comments. They might answer you in an upcoming podcast.

Listen to episode 10 here.

Megachurches are changing. For decades the popular model for church growth was predicated on large facilities hosting many excellent programs to attract the unchurched. But for a number of reasons, not the least being the prevalence of "missional" thinking, some megachurches are trying to adjust their model to be more community-focused. They're asking themselves, "How can we serve our community?" rather than "How can we serve our attenders?"

One example is Granger Community Church in Indiana. Pastor, author, and blogger Tim Stevens has written about Granger's shifting philosophy of ministry, and last week these shifts resulted in a name change for the church's property. Stevens writes:

In our recent revisioning project, we intentionally decided to activate the campus. That is, rather than have a church campus that is primarily focused on weekend services for the congregation–we decided to turn the purpose of the property toward reaching the community.... We realized one of the first things we needed to do was re-brand the entire church property. No longer will it be called Granger Community Church. Instead, we will call it the Granger Commons.

Phil changes things up in this latest podcast. He decides to go solo for a monologue on one of his favorite topics--the origin of the universe. Phil explains his lifelong interest in the interpretation of Genesis 1 and creation, and he shares why "Do you take the Bible literally?" is a bad question.

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Brad Strait is pastor of Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church in Denver, and like many in the Mile High City, he was directly affected by the shootings at the Aurora Theater. One of the young women from his congregation was shot. The story of what happened to her is one we just had to share:

As a chaplain for several police and fire departments, I counseled parents just hours after the Columbine shootings in 1999. However, the tragic Dark Knight Rises shooting in Aurora hit closer to home. One of the victims was a 22-year-old woman from my church, Petra Anderson. Petra (pronounced pay-tra) was hit four times by a shotgun blast. Three pieces of shot hit her arm, and one entered her brain.

I spent all day Friday in the ICU with Petra and her family. Her condition was critical. A piece of buckshot had entered her face through her nose, traveled through her brain, and rested at the back of her skull.

She was admitted to surgery, but the doctors could offer little hope since so much of her brain had been traversed by the bullet. If she survived, the damage might limit her speech, thinking, and mobility.

After five hours, the surgery was finished, and a doctor brought us the news: “It went well, and she’s recovering now. There is minimal brain damage, and we removed the bullet cleanly.”

Each doctor wore a warrior’s smile, but they remained professional and reserved: “Something might still go wrong. We need to wait and see if she makes it for the next 48 hours.”

Tears of joy and appreciation flowed. Hugs were passed around, and we prayed. Some people tried to sleep on the floor, and others were shuttled to a room donated by the Holiday Inn across the street.

I visited Petra the next day, and she looked surprisingly wonderful. The only signs of injury were a small hole in her nose and the medical wrap on her arm. I sat with her mother, Kim (who is in the final stages of terminal cancer), amid the darkened room lit by glowing medical screens.

One of the surgeons came to check on Petra. As Petra lay asleep, he told us more about the surgery. What happened was amazing.

I recently read a report in USA Today that more churches are shifting their worship gatherings from Sunday morning to Wednesday night. For some it’s a matter of convenience, and other churches are simply trying to reach those who can’t/won’t come on Sunday morning.

I’m not sure this can really be called “news.” Churches have been providing alternative worship times for as long as I can remember, and I’m certainly not against that. I’ve spoken with many church leaders, including at my own congregation, about alternative worship times. But what bothers me is the lack of biblical or theological understanding around this topic. Most evangelicals seem to believe Sunday morning worship is merely historical tradition, and therefore carries no great importance. They conclude that we can or should abandon Sunday if a more convenient or missionally effective time can be found.

Occasionally I may hear someone make the connection between Christ’s resurrection and Sunday morning worship. As Keith Green sang many years ago, on Sunday “Jesus rose from the grave and you, you can't even get out of bed.” You may hear about the resurrection as the reason Christians now observe the Sabbath on Sunday rather than the Old Testament’s command to rest on Saturday, but that’s usually as far as the theology of Sunday worship goes. In the end, most church leaders are so thrilled if anyone comes to church, they’re not about to fight about which day people come.

Still, we need to remember that there is a deeper reason why the church has worshiped on Sunday mornings--one that is still relevant today.

In this week’s episode of The Phil Vischer Podcast, Phil responds to criticism about his ukelele. The crew discusses “following your dreams,” the difference between our dreams and God’s dreams, and how dreams can easily become idols. They ask, “Is your treasure Christ or is your treasure what you hope to do for Christ?” Skye discusses why so many Christians fear insignificance, and how that affects our idolatry of dreams.

“As a Christian, the thing that we are to be consumed with – the vision of our life, the dream we have – is supposed to be God himself. He is the treasure that we would give up everything else to possess.” (Skye Jethani)

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I thought the worship wars were over. The church I grew up in put our traditional Southern gospel-style music out to pasture in favor of a more generic contemporary style in the mid 90s. We weren’t exactly in the most progressive region of the country. Surely we were among the last band of skirmishers in a war winding down.

But it seems the war is raging still. I interact with a lot of pastors, and I hear from them time and again that their number one problem is helping the old-timers turn loose of the hymnals and welcome such innovations as overhead projection, electric guitars, and a backbeat. At stake for these pastors is the future of their church. How can they reach younger generations with outdated forms of worship?

I’ve often marveled at how visceral these discussions can get. Older Christians can imply that if you add one praise song to the bulletin, you might as well just harvest their remaining healthy organs and send them out in the woods to die alone. Younger Christians can give you the impression that when Jesus ascended, he ordained the drum set as the primary vehicle of the Holy Spirit.

A recent article in the The Wall Street Journal shed some interesting light on this subject for me. Reporting on the mass hysteria set afire by celebrities like Elvis and the Beatles and, more recently, Justin Bieber, Melinda Beck suggests victims of “Bieber Fever” suffer from a legitimate malady.

This week’s podcast features Phil Vischer and Skye Jethani talking about drive in movies and young America’s fading love affair with cars. With fewer people driving, and more young people moving to cities, what are the implications for suburban megachurches? Phil is also perplexed with PETA and they have a rich conversation around science and faith. This one is not to be missed!

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What does forgiveness taste like? How does grace sound? These are the kinds of questions Brent Bill and Beth Booram invite readers to consider in Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God (IVP 2011).

Bill and Booram don’t denigrate propositional knowledge or downplay the importance of more traditional, verbal sorts of communication. But they do lament that the majority of our spiritual education comes from “sermons, books, Bible studies and other spiritual resources that instruct our thinking” but often “miss our souls.” This leaves us with a spirituality informed by half our brain—the left half, which interprets our experiences—and largely ignores experience itself, which is why the right half of our brain is important: it “does the experiencing through our senses.” Instead, the authors want readers to use both sides of our brains and our five senses to gain an experiential knowledge of God. They want to “help more of you [singular] experience more of God.”

To do that, they suggest, we must each learn how to interpret our daily experiences as sacraments, means of God’s grace in our lives. So, after a brief introduction, the book is divided into five sections, one for each of the senses: tasting, seeing, touching, hearing, smelling. Each section opens with a short introduction that lays out the principles that direct what follows. But the bulk of each section is given to practical spiritual exercises related to a specific sense.

The authors discourage reading the book straight through. They prefer readers take the sections slowly, work the exercises, and be intentional about engaging the senses, not mastering the content. So instead of reading and reviewing the whole book, my reflections here are based on the first section, taste.

Pastor Mark Sandlin has decided to quit church...for three months. Sandlin says he hasn't missed more than 2 consecutive weeks of church his entire life, and his sabbatical isn't simply for rest. He wants to research and understand how non-churchgoers live. He writes:

A week ago I started a three month long sabbatical. I decided from the very beginning that I would not darken the door of a church.... Why am I not going to church? Because a great deal of the people with whom I'd like to figure out how to be in ministry don't. They're not heathen. They're not un-spiritual. They're -- well, just like me, except they have Sundays off.

Phil’s back from his Disneyland vacation with his reflections on the entertainment giant’s changes. The crew talks about Egyptian Salafists banning tomatoes because they are “Christian” and the parallels to Christian fundamentalism. Atheists want to help unbelieving pastors escape the church. Plus Skye Jethani and Christian Taylor debate Phil about the prevalence of strong, independent young women in movies.

Phil Vischer Podcast Episode 6

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Tim Stevens from Granger Community Church was asked a question recently that earlier generations of pastors never faced: "Why go to a church service when you can watch online?" With more churches offering online videos of their worship gatherings, staying home is a growing option for many Christians. While there's nothing new about broadcast worship (churches have utilized radio and television for decades), the fact that you can 'attend' your local church without leaving home makes one feel more connected or committed.

Stevens responds to the question with five reasons to physically go to church. In one of his points he reminds us that church isn't just about being "fed":

If going to “church” once a week was just about gaining what you need spiritually to make it through another week, then tuning in online would be just fine. You could get what you need on Christian radio, reading books, studying the Bible or watching your favorite TV preacher. But the purpose of church is so much broader than that. It is about corporate worship, praying and studying the Bible together, serving one another and reaching out in mission together. This can’t be done in isolation.