People who attend church are more likely than their neighbors to fight death to the last hour. That tells us something about who has been forming them.

Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer makes that case in Outreach: the church has handed the work of preparing people to die over to the medical system, and the medical system teaches that if a treatment exists, you should pursue it. Vanhoozer draws on Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death and on hospice veteran Stephen Jenkinson, who argues our culture manages and postpones death instead of facing it. Christian ethicist Allen Verhey names the same failure and puts the responsibility back on pastors to teach people to live well and die faithful.

Vanhoozer's alternative comes from the 15th century. After the plague, European Christians produced the Ars Moriendi, practical guides to dying that read more like self-help than theology. They assumed the preparation took a lifetime, not a deathbed. As Jenkinson puts it, "People die in the manner of their living."

Sit with what this means for your congregation: Someone in your pews is managing a new diagnosis. A family is driving to a hospice room after the service. Parents are trying to understand their child’s terminal illness. Those people are deciding, week by week, whether this church is where they bring their hardest things or just where they go on Sunday. A church with language for death becomes the place people bring everything else. That is growth you will never see on an attendance report.

Three steps this week:

David Kinnaman: Fluency Is Not Authority | The Exchange with Ed Stetzer

Barna finds 44% of practicing Christians use AI often or very often, against 31% of US adults and 29% of non-practicing Christians. On this week’s episode of The Exchange, David Kinnaman tells Ed Stetzer that pastors are behind their own congregations in AI adoption, and that what people want from leaders is a theology of technology rather than tool tips. Kinnaman argues that though these systems are fluent, and fluency reads like knowledge, true authority comes only from having done the work. 

This week: Ask three people in your congregation how they used AI in the past week. 

Discipleship Scores Are Lowest in the Middle | Lifeway Research

New analysis of Lifeway's State of Discipleship data puts churches under 50 people and over 500 at the top, with congregations of 250-499 scoring lowest in terms of discipleship. Scott McConnell attributes the difference to opportunities rather than size; he also believes the share of attendees who serve is no better at a church of 40 than at a church of 4,000. Ultimately, formation happens through people who make time for other people.

This week: Count how many adults in your church were personally discipled by someone in the last year. 

What would you like to see more of? Hit reply and let us know.

You're receiving this because you care about growing healthy churches. Forward this to a fellow pastor who could use some encouragement.