Friday's at CATALYST are your source for Awesome on the World Wide Web!

Adopt a Terrorist - Love your enemy, be good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute

The Word of Mouth handbook - from the creator of BZZagent (cool site) FREE! via brand autopsy

Email Gold - tips from geniusologist Michael Hyatt

Facebook >= MySpace - WOW! how did they do that so FAST! Why the change? was it the cleanliness and simplicity? lots of features?

The Meth Project - super effective anti-meth commercials from the AMAZING director of Babel & 21 Grams

Top 25 Web Aps - thnku Tony Morgan Live

LVHRD.com = Live Hard :: an alternative, mysterious social group that puts on hip events and crazy contests. Too confusing? read more from GOOD

For those who are ITK, wall decals are the new wall paper. Popcling is on top of it.

CAR RUNS ON WATER!!! IN JAPAN!!! WATER!!! we've seen some sketchy water car guys on YouTube, but this is an actual, for real company, that runs on water, covered by REUTERS! Only drawback: you have to get a tattoo on your forehead and right hand.

Weekly Commentary:
Social networking is exploding. More and more christian leaders are connecting via blogs, twitter, facebook. Laymen are throwing in their thoughts. Churches are uniting via ONEPRAYER. Along with this technological and social transition, the Church seems to be transitioning to Church 2.0. Web 2.0 has given more people a voice, leveling the playing field, allowing for greater collaboration, teamwork. Working together, Christian laymen using their gifts ministering to one another is becoming a greater theme.

With the world becoming more connected, we are seeing a greater opportunity to engage the global community and greatly impact the world for Christ, if we can escape the Christian bubble to do it.

With all the negative perceptions we're battling and Church attendance in decline, there's been lots of innovation going on in the Church. Many churches and church plants are trying new strategies and techniques to reach new people. From shocking sermon series to racey marketing pieces, from new venues and programming to lack of programming - lots of people are trying lots of things.

The Church is facing so many challenges in our post-modern, post-Christian culture. Catalyst wants to foster innovation in the Church to more effectively reach our generation. Are you doing anything innovative? What problems are you facing and what are your creative solutions? Please share with the class.

What are you trying and why? Is it working?

The latest submission for the Catalyst Artists | Together Project has been submitted by Joe Miller of More Than Cake, with a mixed media art piece including photography, illustration, and written word entitled “Sublime Fatherhood.” This is a perfect piece to remind us of Father’s Day, it seems to have a deeper meaning given the mindset of the viewer. 

We are still accepting submissions to this project and will continue to gather the pieces through the end of August for an exhibit at Catalyst. Learn more about the project and view other submissions here.

This is HUGE. The largest cohesive evangelical group, the Southern Baptist Convention (with 16 million members), met last week, and is experiencing decline in membership and baptisms.

Ed Stetzer blogged about the annual convention:

"Newly elected SBC president Johnny M. Hunt believes this year's annual meeting has helped our churches to see things as they really are. 'I think this is kind of an alarmed setting ... where we see our ship sinking. We're declining,' Hunt said. But at the point of decline, more Southern Baptists are expressing optimism and sense the denomination stepping up to face the challenge."
...
"I would reiterate that without change, our course over the last 50 years does not look positive. I pray that our future will be filled with a continued tone of gospel-focused, biblically sound, properly relevant, missional engagement both here and abroad so that all facets of our tribe can fulfill our ambassadorial role for Christ."

Furthermore, this article from Lillian Kwon at The Christian Post is rather compelling. She writes:

"The 16-million member denomination went into their 2008 meeting after the April release of LifeWay Christian Resources' Annual Church Profile, which revealed that baptisms fell for the third straight year in 2007 to SBC’s lowest level since 1987. Total membership also dropped by 0.24 percent to 16,266,920."

...
"'The truth is individuals and churches are the ones who are in decline. And we must deal with reality,' Page said at the annual meeting. 'We have compared ourselves to the wrong standards, ignoring God’s call for repentance and we have been failing to be relevant to a culture that sees us as representatives of death, not as representatives of light.'"

"'I believe God is calling us to see that the problem lies with me,' he added. 'Yes, there are problems amongst us. I have deep concern about the absolute disintegration of many of our churches … But let’s take an honest look at reality. Blame the denomination if you wish, but the problem is ‘me.’ ‘I haven’t been winning people to Christ as much as I [ought to].’"

This decline seems to be across the Church, not just the SBC. Why is the Church declining? What do we need to do about it? Is evangelism the problem/answer, or is it something else?