coming this sunday...

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

contact & conflict

In cultural engagement there's a point of contact & a point of conflict. That's the sharp end of the gospel and where repentance is focused. — Steve Timmis

losing truth and calling

Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on "the economy"; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of a building fund, the organized church will elect—indeed, has already elected—to save the building fund. The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted to exclusively "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences. — Wendell Berry, "God and Country" in What Are People For?

pbs and the emerging church

Interesting to hear a "news" perspective on some of the possible changes to how Americans do church:



"There are also questions about the extent to which the emerging church conversation will push out beyond a white-middle-class movement to become truly diverse and global. And whether it will have a lasting spiritual impact." Zing!

the living church

I am getting back into reading books again. I just received a shipment of new books and John Stott's The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor is a breath of fresh air.

Stott, I think, lays out a basis for common ground moving forward as a Church in an ever-changing post-Christian culture. The respect for the institutional Church, and the heart for the authentic Church would be hard for anyone to argue with.

While Stott dives into reflections on the elements in any church (Worship, Evangelism, Ministry, Fellowship, Preaching, Giving, and Impact) that will certainly be challenging to many, I loved his picture of "God's Vision for His Church." He argues that the characteristics that are essential for a living church are:

A Learning Church: a church submissive to the teachings of the apostles (Scripture)...relating to the apostles.

A Caring Church: a church characterized by generosity...relating to each other.

A Worshiping Church: a church that rejoices and reveres God both in private and corporately...relating to God.

An Evangelizing Church: a church with compassionate outreach (led by Jesus, spreading salvation, and part of every day life)...relating to the world.

Stott also invested time affirming the strengths of the "emerging" church, as he sees them:

1. Identifying the life (or way) of Jesus as their example and teaching.

2. Transforming secular space by rejecting the sacred-secular divide promoted by modernism.

3. Living as community as kingdom or family community.

I commend this book to those of you who are passionate about Christ's Bride, the Church.

how is your yahdaw?

"The church is the only cooperative society in the world which exists for the benefit of its non-members." - Archbishop William Temple