We are now in the middle of our "Theology Gone Wild" series which is mini-series and part of going through all of 1 Corinthians. Two weeks ago, I taught on the origins and development of the Lord's Supper through the years and the ways the Corinthian church were misusing it. Eric Bryant spoke this past Sunday and did an excellent job speaking from 1 Corinthians 6 which you can read about here. Eric wrote the book Peppermint-Filled Pinatas which we just gave out to some of our leaders at VFC. This Sunday I am speaking on the peculiar sounding passages of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:9-15. We are calling this week "Women: Silent and Submissive?" and will be spending two Sundays on this topic.
I don't blog daily due to personal priorities, time and also not having something to blog about all the time. I usually post things that I love getting interaction with others on, whether silly things like vintage shirts or serious things. But as I am pondering what posts I will write next, several are coming to mind:
1) The Emerging Church (5 years later): since I wrote the book The Emerging Church in 2003, I get asked what I would write different now, what has changed since then etc. This may be several posts as there have been some unexpected twists in the emerging church and emergent church story and adventure I wouldn't have predicted 5 years ago.
2) Is some of the "missional" discussion an Emperor With New Clothes?: I truly hope I am wrong about what I am sensing about this and I may very likely get some argument back. But the more I probe leaders and churches who are crying out that "attractional" churches are not effective missionally - but then I look into their actual churches and fruit of "missional" churches, I wonder if the argument against "attractional" churches is not as valid as being spoken about. We use the term "missional" in our church, so I am not against the term at all. I fully know missionary work takes time and is not an overnight thing. I also know that we cannot be counting hands raised in a worship gathering as what we use for numbers etc. But what I am finding interesting is stories like when I was with someone who is in a large city and they were saying that the post-Christian young people of that city would never be drawn to big churches or an attractional model. Yet, very close right there in the same area is a large megachurch whom is seeing younger adults raised entirely outside of the church and who had negative feelings of Christianity - put faith in Jesus and now are disciples of Jesus.
Most of the people I hear talking about how "attractional" model doesn't work in our emerging culture, are usually from very small churches or house churches who often have been in existence for several years, not just new ones. Yet usually, in the very city or town they are from - there are fruit and stories of dozens, hundreds and even thousands in some cases of very post-Christian, postmodern thinking people who normally would have nothing to do with Christianity or church becoming disciples of Jesus. In a future post, I would like to define what I mean by "attractional" and will flesh this out further. I am not by any means talking about big church vs. small church as their is beauty in both large and small churches. This isn't a big vs. small church discussion at all. I am talking about the specific theories of the "missional" and "attractional" terms and what non-Christian emerging generations will or won't be drawn to and how disciples are made - not in China and not how in the early church it happened (although of course we can learn from those examples), but how the Holy Spirit can use local churches here in the USA in our emerging culture here and now ro create healthy disciples from those who were outside the church and even negative against the church and Christianity as so many are today.
3) A New Network of Some Sort Being Established: I am someone who thrives on relationship with other church leaders as well as theologians who have similar vision, heart and core theology. It greatly helps me be inspired to carry on knowing others are out there going through the same thing. Their context and what their churches look like may be quite different, but there is a similar heartbeat and mission. I am in discussion with a few leaders who are feeling the need to connect - who are evangelical (in the original meaning of the word) and seriously, seriously, seriously passionate and aggressive and risk-taking about evangelism in our emerging culture. We were talking how important doctrine is going to be for uniting a network like this and the Lausanne Covenant seems broad enough, yet refined enough to still define a theological commonality like we are thinking about. It is pre-mature to talk too much about this, but I personally am quite enthused about this possibility as I know I need this in my life. So as this develops (or doesn't develop), I will post about it. But I am thrilled thinking about the possibility and potential and have had some great meetings and conversations so far about it.
So, those are some future posts and what I am currently thinking about. If you have any comments about these things, please let me know.
But now, I better go over to Katie and Claire as they found some little tree frog hopping around in our house that they are shouting out I need to look at.
