Eyes to see…

Lens

Sustainable Christian community…

If Christianity is to become aware of what it is, we must abandon the pastoral church which takes care of people, which is the usual form of the Western church. Instead, we have to call to life a Christian community church. Either we set about this church reform by ourselves, or it will be forced [...]

Dwelling in the Word: Luke 24

I will be preaching from Luke 24 on Sunday–the Walk to Emmaus.  This passage took on new meaning for me about a year and a half ago when I was reading Exiles:  Living Missionally in  Post-Christian Culture.  Michael Frost writes a comparative analysis of the 1601 and the 1606 versions of Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio.  [...]

Your Kingdom come, your will be done on Earth…

The Other:  Postmodern shorthand for anyone differing in any way from “us,” born of the reality that in an era of radical pluralism and globalization, we are constantly confronted with people who are indeed different from us.
Tony Jones, The New Christians:  Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier
Jesus and the Kingdom, Brian McLaren
Can you imagine a community [...]

Discussion between Tall Skinny Kiwi and McLaren…

I found this short exchange between Andrew Jones and Brian McLaren to be quite helpful.  If there is one weakness I see in the Emergent movement it is an underdeveloped ecclesiology.  I hear TSK pushing Brian out on this point in this brief conversation. 
Amidst the disillusionment with the establishment church, in the prophetic challenge to the [...]

Tony Jones a Smurf!?

Mark Van Steenwyk offers this effective use of satyr.  A healthy dose of humor seems like a good elixer for this rainy Friday afternoon.
Along the same vein…did you hear that Hillary Clinton is a Muslim?

A stunted ecclesiology…

“To read deeply in history is to cease being Protestant.” 
Cardinal John Henry Newman, himself a famous convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism
 
I’m pretty sure I have ceased to be Protestant (to the extent that I ever was).  As a good Evangelical, I grew up with a fairly under-developed ecclesiology (H/T J.I. Packer for the “stunted ecclesiology” [...]

The Future Lies in the Past…

Here is an excerpt from a story in the most recent issue of Christianity Today.  The article is entitled…

The Future Lies in the Past
Why evangelicals are connecting with the early church as they move into the 21st century. 

From Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, and living, practicing monks and nuns, they must learn both the strengths and the [...]

The problem in postmodern society from a Christian perspective…

G.K Chesterton once entered a public debate on the state of the nation by writing a letter to The Times.  In response to the question of what was wrong with the world he wrote this:
                                         Dear Sir, I am.
A prayer for the Church… 
Lord,
Help us in our weakness and inadequacy to understand the ways in which [...]

Exclusion and embrace…

Someone shared a story with me this week about some young men who had been shunned by their Beachy Amish church.  They were shunned not for some sexual sin or for any other hedonistic indulgence.  It actually is quite different than that.  I heard the story second hand, so I can only relate the gist [...]