On Monday, I started the class at Multnomah on Missional Churches. The instructor is Roger Trautman and there are 10 other students in the class -- many of who are working toward working on some form of the emerging church.
After dispensing of some of the introductory things like class requirements, we discussed the meaning of "emerging church". Here's a sample of some of the notable thoughts:
"Churches need to redefine themselves every 5-7 years," Mike
Perhaps every church ought to re-emerge regularly.
"Ecclectic is the emerging church," Halden
There are many definitions to the emerging church.
Jody also offered a comment that I didn't get the full quote on, but his point was that the emerging church is mostly about living like Jesus did in terms of serving others.
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Dr. Trautman offered these two notable items:
1. It's really the re-emergent church. Church historians liken the current movement to other movements of the past such as Luther and Wesley. These were times when people did things differently -- and they changed our churches for centuries.
2. The missional/emergent church represents a shift in truth-finding from primarily a study-oriented church experience to a service-oriented societal experience.
This point #2 is what I've been thinking about for a long time. Here's a great source on this thought:
- Rob Bell did a Catalyst Podcast a year ago on how his church is serving the city of Grand Rapids: http://www.catalystspace.com/src/07-Rob_Bell_Podcast_Part2.mp3
-Derek
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
First Day in PM 843 at Multnomah
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1 comment:
Nice words...miss ya man.
These thoughts are why in many ways we have taken our family to San Fran every month. It is our role as parents, raising kids in this experience driven culture to actively tie the 'Truth' to their experience. This is something I have found rather difficult while swinging, watching movies, hanging out on the boat or waiting in line at an amusement part. They do make themselves redily available, on the other hand, while taking fresh grown vegtables or baked cookies to our neighbors or walking the streets of San Fran with food for the homeless or widow. Maybe you could write a parenting book on this while you are up there watching it rain...Connecting Truth to your child's life experience -that could be the subtitle but you'd need to derify some cute title to sell it!
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