Thoughts on Church

A while back I read "Breaking the Missional Code" by Ed Stetzer & David Putman. While I didn't agree with everything, there were some great thoughts. I've been meaning to post a few of them but keep forgetting to have the book at the same place as the computer. I finally got my act together so here goes:

You cannot grow a biblically faithful church without loving peple and preaching the gospel. But loving people means understanding and communicating with them. Preaching the gospel means to proclaim a gospel about the Word becoming fles - and proclaiming that the body of Christ needs to become incarnate in every cultural expression.

pg 15

If a church does not regularly examine its culture, it ends up as a culture unto itself. Soon the church is filled with people who pray in King James Englishm call the pastor "brother" to show respect and forbid women from wearing pants to church They arestill relating to cultural issues that were relevant one hundred years before. However, that culture and those issues have long since disappeared - everywhere, that is except within the church. Instead the church needs to regularily ask, "Are we faithfull proclaiming the faith in the place in which we find ourselves today?" A church will be completely faithful only when it is faithful to its God, its Scripture, and its mission to the world.

pg 28

Someone once asked Wayne Gretsky why he was a good hockey player. He answered that most players skate to where the puck is, but he skated to where the puck was going to be. The Bible refers to people like that: "Men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do" (1 Chron. 12:32).

pg 60

The good news is Jesus transcends all cultures. Jesus is not modern. Jesus is not postmodern. And his body, the church, is neither modern nor postmodern, though it lives within both cultural paradigms. Ultimately, Christ's commuity is a way of life that incarnates into and challenges any and every culture, in every time, in every place. Mission is an intrinsically translational task. Throughout history, God has shown himself relating to people within their cultural frame of reference. The life and work of Jesus Christ set a pattern for the church's mission. In the incarnation, God become more than words. The Word himself entered culture ina specific time and space.

Jonathan Campbell

pg 73

God is at work in the lives of thsoe outside the church and invites us to join him. It is encouraging to understand that God is more interested in the eternal well-being of people than we are. He has created people with an incredible appetite for him, and he is actively at work in their lives drawing them to himself. His invitation for us is to join him in his activity in people's lives. The key to this is becoming sensitive to what God is doing in the lives of those all around us

pg 125

There is a rising feeling among emerging church leaders and followers of Jesus, tht in many modern contemporary churches, something has subtly gone astray in what we call "church" and what we call "Christianity." Through time, church has become a place that you go to have your needs met, instead of being a called local community of God on a mission together. Through time, much of contemporary Christianity subtly has become more about inviting others into the subcultures of Christian music, language and church programs than about passionately inviting others unto a radically alternative community and way of life as disciples of Jesus and Kingdom living.

Dan Kimball & Josh Fox

pg 202

So there you have it. There's more but those are some of the highlights. What is the Church? What is our mission? How do we interact with the world around us? How do we equip and engage leaders? They're huge questions that, while we might not have answers to, we need to be thinking about.