Sunday, November 12, 2006

A Picture of My Emerging Journey

Trev and I go to the Emergent Conversatiion in CA. and hear a guy named Brian discussing some things with some other dudes on stools.

Joy and I begin the trilogy of A New Kind of Christian...wow.

Trev and I travel again to CA ...this time to go to the Creation Spirituality event. This leads to living within the wonder of creation and realizing that the story of the fall is very true...just not that true. And by the way, Matthew Fox told me that not only can I challenge/dialogue with the scripture in the local church but that I must!

Christ Church friends engage in the conversation.....Tom, Mark, Marcus, Trev, Nancy, Schnepps, David and Josh, Aaron, ...................................................!

Joy and I read Marcus Borg.

I, and we, travel to keep learning.

It becomes about the life of Jesus. How did he live, and how are we therefore called to live.

It becomes about the Good News that the Kingdom of God, the Mission of God's Love, is breaking through right now and inviting us to join in.

And what does an emergent church look like......caring for and enjoying each other, gathering around Christ and his ways, and then going out to live and love as he leads having the dust of the rabbi on us.....I'm still not sure. The journey continues.

4 comments:

Craig LaSuer said...

I think there needs to be at least an equal focus on who we are outside the church community as who we are inside. I think most churches have about a 80% focus on the happenings of the church and perhaps a 20% about being Jesus out there with family, work, neighborhood, volunteering,just being a good human, etc. What if it was 20% focus on church community and 80% beyond?

Anonymous said...

A cool look back at the journey! It's been a great one so far... :)

Tom McCool said...

A local Christian bookstore has a sign outside that says "Developing the Kingdom of God within you." Maybe that's an appropriate vision statement for a Christian bookstore, and personal transformation is an important part of being a Christian. But it's not what Jesus was "all" about. Finding that balance between personal transformation and world transformation is a struggle that I'm dealing with right now. I don't think I'm doing very well with "world" transformation - the Kingdom of God outside me.

Mark Gaylor said...

It's been a great journey and continues...I had an interview recently with one of the admissions people at Christian Theological Seminary and she asked me what I thought would be one of the most important things the church needed to do in the next ten years. I told her we needed to get outside the church where people are and do things that would take the kingdom to them istead of trying to bring them to the kingdom. we had a good discussion.