If you are in a church that is rigid or controlling it may be a constraint to your personal expression. How do you vent your thoughts and concern. The house groups and indeed the House Group Movement sought to engage with one another in the comfort and less formal setting of home. There needs to be dialogue and in the appropriate place midweek business meeting etc. There is more than ever in the current churches a need to evaluate and seek the plan for the future. In 1970 if some one said the Boys Brigade will decline rapidly people would have laughed. Yet in the space a of a few years it did.
Now consider the church- ok more established, yet it, recognises the decline. What now?
Of course where there is dialogue there will be differing opinion!
This can be seen, by some as inconsistent with a rigid theology of black and white! Debate can only improve the understanding. This together with a more thoughtful process linked to solitude will surely provide a positive Christ centred practice rather than a regimental, all believe the same, untested theology of the “Victorian age”. Sure there will be mistakes but the distilling down will be a purifying process. Can you imagine Abraham trying to answer the question while he was in the desert ;
Where are you going? “Eh... Following God, he told me to follow this column of cloud... of smoke.” “and the end result?”...”eh the best land a promised land.” How will you know what its like? “ Sorry don't know... but when we get there we will know I simply have to trust in God to take me and lead the people to where ever that is.”
The conclusions from the discovery walk or the de-construction, I await rather than dismissing as out of hand. I am encouraged that the de-construction that many fear, from their so called established church, is questioning not purely for the sake of it but with a God fearing responsibility. While Emerging people will not simply set up Churches as we have known them, they will, seek to find a way of expressing the Kingdom in the community which has a more holistic approach.
So where in the say 70's and 80's indeed the 90's the church set up “alternative church” which took the flavour of a sub-culture we see the emerging people wanting to be the culture and shape the culture head on. (Like the Joshua story “tread the land” -possession). The difficulty comes from within the established church which is trying to keep doing what worked or did not work over the last 300 years. Status Quo (not the group) is seldom forward thinking. Where are the visionaries?
Where are you going? “Eh... Following God, he told me to follow this column of cloud... of smoke.” “and the end result?”...”eh the best land a promised land.” How will you know what its like? “ Sorry don't know... but when we get there we will know I simply have to trust in God to take me and lead the people to where ever that is.”
The conclusions from the discovery walk or the de-construction, I await rather than dismissing as out of hand. I am encouraged that the de-construction that many fear, from their so called established church, is questioning not purely for the sake of it but with a God fearing responsibility. While Emerging people will not simply set up Churches as we have known them, they will, seek to find a way of expressing the Kingdom in the community which has a more holistic approach.
So where in the say 70's and 80's indeed the 90's the church set up “alternative church” which took the flavour of a sub-culture we see the emerging people wanting to be the culture and shape the culture head on. (Like the Joshua story “tread the land” -possession). The difficulty comes from within the established church which is trying to keep doing what worked or did not work over the last 300 years. Status Quo (not the group) is seldom forward thinking. Where are the visionaries?
