Friday, January 31, 2003
After reading the book off and on for the past six months, I finally finished
Missional Church the other day. Reading that book was a trippy experience for me. I really got a lot out of it, but I was distracted numerous times, which is why it took so long to get through it. In retrospect, those distractions may have been orchestrated ones, and not by me, either. It seems like every time I was able to pick the book up after not having read it for a few weeks, I read something that plugged in exactly with where I've been in my own journey toward understanding where I am in this whole emerging church thing. On Wednesday as I read the final chapter, it happened again. I had been doing some thinking and grappling with my church planting future and my ambivalence about doing it through my denomination. Without further commentary on why, here are some words that really hit me:
We know from an attentive reading of our history that we may expect the church to continue to reduce the gospel to a comfortable fit with its culture. Therefore we know that we need to repent of such reductionism. We know that the church will, again and again, fail to perceive opportunities for witness in its cultural context. We know that we need to repent of our lack of vision. We know that the church will allow itself to be seduced by power, fame, prestige, and wealth. We know thus that we need to seek God's cleansing and forgiving work to prepare us for our continuing mission. We know that we, as the church, will deny our Lord by allowing other masters to dominate and use us. We will have to break these idols and be restored to our proper place as Christ's disciples and apostles.
