The Church Is Not Apple, But…

The Church is not Apple. I know that. I wasn’t trying to suggest it was with last week’s riff on Guy Kawasaki’s post about learning from the Apple store. There are plenty of things about Apple that I don’t want to emulate (and, truth be told, plenty of stuff in the church – historically and presently – that I’m not proud of, either, but that’s for another post.) And there are lots of places where even a metaphorical comparison between Apple and the Church breaks down. So, let me say again: The Church is not Apple…. But…. And of course here’s where it gets interesting. Because while the Church is not Apple, and our...

10 Things Churches Can Learn from the Apple Store

What  follows below is a post from Guy Kawasaki who was for many years a “chief evangelist” for all things Apple and who continues to write about excellence in design, marketing, innovation, and retail. In this piece he summarizes some key insights from a book about the phenomenal retail success of the Apple store. As I was reading Guy’s post, I couldn’t help but think about how many of these same insights might apply to the ways we think about church. So I’ll place the whole of the original post below so that you can read Guy’s insights. But I’ll also comment (in italic) after each section, offering  a...

Postmodern Church

What is postmodernism? Obviously, no single post can describe it. But one way to think about it is to recognize that we no longer live in a time or culture where there is a single agree-upon version of, or story about, reality. Instead, there are lots of competing stories about what makes the...

Pregnant Church?

There are lots of reports of the mainline church’s decline in recent decades. And there are actually new reports, about the decline of evangelical and conservative churches as well. But while the facts and figures may be grim, Presbyterian minister (PCUSA) and writer MaryAnn McKibben Dana...

Re-Imagining

Adam Walker Cleveland writes a thoughtful blog about theology, ministry, and technology called “Pomomusings.” Recently he’s been collecting the essays of folks from a variety of corners of what’s sometimes called “the Emergent Church” to answer two questions: 1: What is one belief,...

“Church”

What do you think of when you hear the word “church”? Episcopal priest John Mark Wiggers, of the East Tennessee Diocese, engages folks on the streets of his town to play a little word association: “When I say church, you say…?” Well, what do you say? Watch Father...