THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Not terribly creative, but this is what I was reading and pondering today.

Dan Kimball- about the emerging church

"To me, an emerging church is a church who is redefining the church and our ecclesiology in this emerging post-Christian culture. Praying and thinking through the ramifications of what it means to be the church today. There are a lot of churches just starting now, but so many are still focusing on "the worship service" as the starting point and not thinking through what the church is holistically or even historically. So much of our current church methodology in evangelical churches really only comes from the past 20-50 years. I think we better go way beyond that, and beyond the Reformation too. The Reformation shook things up in a great way, but also set methodological values in place that we still live with today that I think need to change for the emerging church. That is a key element for sure of what I would call an "emerging church" - to be rethinking our ecclesiology for today's culture.
Being missional is also an absolute key factor for the emerging church. By being missional, I mean that the core fabric of the church is that we are about being a community of worshippers on a mission. but the mission is not getting people to "got to church", as you cannot go to church. we are the church. The mission is being the church in all we do and all we are, wherever we are and from this we bring kingdom influence to those around us. We should be inviting others to be joining us as followers of Jesus, not inviting them to events where they raise their hands at an altar call. We should be evaluating our success not by numbers, but by what kind of missional disciples we see being shaped by being in our communities of faith."

LETTERS FROM EXILE

It is my intention to reflect daily via this blog- will it happen? Probably not....I happened to get to work exceptionally early this morning, and found myself with the time to contemplate for a moment.
Somewhere, sometime before we left Findlay, OH for Nashville, I set the little ribbon marker in my bible at Psalm 51, for reasons unknown. Actually, scratch that- I do know why. I was trying desperately to write some lyrics, to compose a tune that expressed my heart (which was, at that point, sadly empty). I failed. I suppose I needed to.
Anyway, fast-forward to 2 weeks ago, feeling as if I had heard God tell me that He brought me here to Nashville to teach me something- to test my loyalty in worship when a paycheck was not provided for my songs...mind you, I told people all along that I thought this was why I was going to Nashville, but now I actually believed it.....sorry everyone.
So, I open my bible, after having the thought one morning that 1.) I was desperately empty due to having almost no prayer life or scripture-reading time, and 2.) What has made it so difficult for me in the past to absorb the Words is my ridiculous notion that I should be on some sort of fast-track- that my understanding of scripture would grow as I speed-read through it like I did everything else. It's ok, and even necessary for me to spend DAYS (this hurts me), DAYS, absaorbing the same scripture. I know, revelation, right? Anyway, I open my bible, and its still stuck on Psalm 51. I read it, and read it, and read it, and get little nuggets about worship and sacrifice, and such. Then, it hits me- I AM in exile. I HAVE gone through the motions. I DID learn God-worship when my pride was shattered. I sat in my car on the drive to work one morning crying as I sang along with a song I had never noticed the words to. How sad the time I wasted; how sad I had to learn my lesson in exile. But, "Your grace has found me just as I am, empty-handed but a life in your hands." How majestic God is.

Psalm 51, from The Message//Remix.