This is my initial post. Others will follow regularly (I trust). Allow me to explain what is behind this Blog, its strange name, and its history.

For several years I participated in the Gospel and Our Culture (GOCN) discussions among those being influenced by the writings of Lesslie Newbigin. (That’s a whole subject in itself.) Part of Newbigin’s thesis is that the church is primarily missional, rather than custodial. He has raised before the somewhat moribund church in the west, that it has entered into the post-Christendom era, and into a culture that has had access to the Christian message, but now has rejected it, and has built up anti-bodies against it.

What I noticed sitting in those very fruitful discussions was that most of the participants were either academics (seminary faculty), or denominational staff. I was one of the very few who had a significant career (40+ years) as a pastor. For them it was the stimulus of engaging theoretically in the whole challenging subject. For me it was far more existential. I regularly reminded them that for a millennium and a half the church had been built upon an institutional paradigm of an active clergy and a passive laity (for the most part). The pastoral office was primarily custodial rather than equipping. This being so, if you tried to impose upon the communicants of such a custodial church scene the concept that they were seriously responsible for engagement in the mission of the church, then “all hell would break loose.” I could show them the scars.

In my own life I was in some fascinating discussions with some very (insistently?) curious twenty-something adults, who pressed me on the meaning and purpose of the church, and its role and viability in their understanding of discipleship. Out of these multiple discussions, over many months, came my own having to get honest with myself about my own understanding of the church (and questions I had dodged). Being a product of Christendom, its institutions, and traditions, … I had avoided asking some more basic questions.

This all is recorded in the first of three books, which is entitled ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH (Wipf and Stock, 2006). That book dialogically engaged the subject of what constitutes an authentic church. What will be following in these blogs will be engaging the continuing questions that keep arising from these young friends. After all, half the world’s population is under 25 years of age!

Stand by. Let me hear from you.