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."