Thom Rainer used to be the leader of Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing and propaganda arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). When the SBC fired him/allowed him to quit honorably, he pivoted to Church Answers. He’s been there ever since, dispensing wisdom-for-hire to the frantic pastors of failing churches. His nepo-baby son Sam joins him there.
In a recent opinion post, Thom Rainer frets about people age 65+, who are apparently leaving evangelical churches in great numbers. And lately, more evangelicals like him are noticing that older Americans, once the mainstays and so-called “anchors” of churches, are leaving their clubhouses in greater and greater numbers. Unfortunately, Read more
Thom Rainer functions as a living, breathing, nonstop rebuttal to evangelical claims. Back in Ye Olden Daies of evangelical power, he reigned as the leader of Lifeway Christian Resources, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) propaganda and publishing arm. During that time, Lifeway tanked in sales. Once he scare-quotes ‘retired,’ he Read more
For evangelicals, who literally define themselves by their drive to recruit new people for their churches, church drift represents far more than an absolute tragedy.
Thom Rainer has come out with yet another blog post trying to staunch the hemorrhaging blood from evangelical churches. This time around, he’s attacking Christian pastors who make excuses about boosting church attendance.
Today, let me show you what’s going on with the LifeWay lawsuit against Thom Rainer, and how TRUE CHRISTIANS™ ignore everything in the Bible whenever it becomes expedient. Also, I’ll show you the Christianese these folks are using to try to get their way!
In his 2018 blog post, he warned his readers that American churches were cruising toward a ‘tipping point.’ Today, let me show you what Thom Rainer meant by that — and how his song-and-dance patter has changed since then.
Hi and welcome back! Yesterday, I showed you a 2014 book by Thom Rainer, Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive. As the title indicates, the book describes how evangelical churches wither away and die — and how to prevent that from happening to the reader’s own Read more
In essence, ‘Autopsy’ demands that evangelical churches become something besides what they are and always have been: gratification stations for the self-declared chosen elite ambassadors of King American-Jesus Superman.
If you ever found yourself teetering on the fence about this religion, then this post is for you–because that problem and Thom Rainer’s solutions to it represent exactly why many thousands of people every day reject it, and also why they should.
This type of business, church revitalization, might well be one of post-Christian America’s most lucrative cottage industries. Today, I’ll show you what revitalization is–and why it’ll fail just like everything else Christians do to try to regain their onetime cultural dominance.