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Showing posts from July, 2023

The Missing Link in Church Revitalization: Leadership Development

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by Bart L. Denny If you’ve spent any time in church leadership, you’ve likely felt the heartbreak of decline. Empty pews. Aging buildings. Once-thriving ministries now little more than calendar placeholders. Churches across America—especially in small towns and aging neighborhoods—are closing their doors at an alarming rate. And even those that remain open are often mere shells of what they once were. But here’s the good news: Jesus hasn’t given up on His Church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). Still, that doesn’t mean local churches won’t die—because they do. And far too often. That breaks my heart, and I believe it should break yours, too! Why Churches Are Dying Some blame culture. And yes, the data is troubling. Fewer people identify as Christian. Fewer attend worship. And many younger adults have simply walked away from the church altogether (some recent data suggests that is changing, especially with young men). But culture isn’t the whole s...
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Some Thoughts on Empowering Emerging Leaders in Church Revitalization

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By Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M. You may have read that church revitalization pastors must focus on developing and empowering next-generation leaders if their churches are to see successful revitalization. My doctoral dissertation research bore that out—not that I was at all surprised. I had already heard successful church revitalization pastors talk about it. But more than that, long before I became a “doctor,” years of experience in the military and ministry had already proven to me the necessity of developing leaders. I write here specifically to church revitalization pastors. However, given that, to the best of my knowledge, all good leadership is biblical—regardless of who is doing it—this advice could fit most leadership contexts. The best leadership development advice ever: “Train your replacement.” In the Navy—at least in the units where I most enjoyed serving—the motto was “train your replacement.” It made sense. If something happened to you in a battle (or even an accident, giv...
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Why Christians Should Oppose the Death Penalty (Even If the Bible Affirms It)

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By Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M. Let’s Be Honest: The Bible Doesn’t Shy Away from the Death Penalty The Bible makes it plain: God established capital punishment as part of His justice. From Genesis 9:6 to Romans 13, Scripture consistently affirms the state’s right to wield the sword. Even Jesus, while showing mercy, never denied the legitimacy of that authority. So if Scripture supports the death penalty, why should modern Christians push back? Here’s the Problem: Today’s Death Penalty Isn’t Biblical Capital punishment, in God’s design, was supposed to be fair, swift, and just. The Mosaic Law didn’t hand out death sentences lightly. It required two or more eyewitnesses. It punished false testimony harshly. It didn’t discriminate. But our modern systems—particularly in the U.S.—are riddled with inconsistency, bias, and delay. They fail to meet the biblical standard. What Justice Looks Like in God’s Eyes High burden of proof (Deut. 19:15) Equal treatment of rich and poor ...
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Is Speaking in Tongues for Today?

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 I wrote This research paper several years ago (sometime in 2012) for a class. Edits are minor, and where my views have changed or evolved, I speak of that in brackets. The topic is one of controversy in evangelicalism. For me, in the years since I first wrote this, the issue has become less about whether speaking in tongues exists today but rather whether what passes for tongues-speaking is, in fact, the speaking in tongues we encounter in the Bible. I don’t wish to break fellowship with people who disagree with me on this particular issue but are passionate about the Gospel of Jesus Christ (as I am) and hold the Bible as God’s inspired Word (as I do). I believe that biblical tongues-speaking still exists and is rare. Moreover, most of what passes for tongues-speaking in churches today is not the phenomenon we see in the New Testament. Is Speaking in Tongues for Today? by Bart L. Denny, 2012 (updated in 2023) Introduction Does tongues-speaking continue today?  This pa...
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Did John Write the Fourth Gospel? Why the Author Matters More Than You Think

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Apostle John the Theologian on the island of Patmos, by Andrei Mironov, 2012. by Bart L. Denny For nearly two millennia, the Church has affirmed that the Apostle John—the son of Zebedee and beloved disciple of Jesus—wrote the Gospel that bears no name. But in recent centuries, particularly in academic circles, that assumption has faced fierce opposition. Some modern scholars have dismissed John’s authorship, proposing instead a mysterious “John the Elder,” a hypothetical community of Johannine disciples, or even late Gnostic sources. 1 So, does it really matter who wrote the Gospel of John? More than you might think. In this article, I want to make the case that the traditional view—that the Apostle John wrote the Fourth Gospel—is not only historically viable but the most reasonable conclusion when all the evidence is laid out. We'll look at both the internal clues from the Gospel itself and the external witness of early church history. And we’ll see why this...
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A Rust-Bucket Ship and a Struggling Church: The Leadership Development Imperative in Two "Turn-around" Stories

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 The Ugly Baby made pretty: a sea story. by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D., Th.M. As I stared into an aft storage locker crammed full of apparently useless detritus and surveyed a ship’s fantail cluttered with more junk—a rusted-out barbeque grill, alleged spare parts that didn’t seem to belong to any of the ship’s installed equipment, and big sealed metal cans of who-knows-what. Rust covered the deck and all the deck fittings and equipment I surveyed. In the background, I could hear Miguel Rivera, our crew’s boatswain’s mate first class petty officer, whistling the theme song of “Sanford and Son,” a 1970s television show where Red Fox played the owner of a junkyard. Pretty appropriate. How could a commissioned U.S. Navy ship have gotten like this? Just two days before, Petty Officer Rivera and I, along with the rest of our California-based crew, had been assigned to a slick, fast, and well-maintained coastal patrol ship. For the past year, I had been proud to be the captain of that ship...
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The Influence of Bonhoeffer’s “Religionless Christianity” on Radical Theology

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As best I can remember, I wrote this paper sometime in 2016. Introduction This paper will compare Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “religionless Christianity” with the radical (or “death of God”) theology, demonstrating that radical theology it is the logical outworking of his thoughts on religionless Christianity—even if Bonhoeffer himself would have been shocked to see such a development. Of course, many groups have appropriated Bonhoeffer as their own, even if he was not. Bonhoeffer’s brave faith, in the face of Nazi persecution, imprisonment, interrogation, and execution—as opposed to the capitulation to Nazism of the majority of German Protestants in his day—appeals to a broad swath of Christianity, including evangelical conservatives, mainline liberals, liberation theologians, and even the radical or “death of God” theologians. Indeed, as Pugh has said, both pacifists and Mike Bray, the notorious abortion clinic bomber, invoke Bonhoeffer’s example in their causes.[1] Neatly compa...
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