Enchanted Community

BLOG 4/18/13: WHAT DO THEY HEAR, OR EXPERIENCE WHEN THEY TURN UP?

I sit here in one of my favorite coffee houses (Dancing Goats) and look at all of the energy being generated over computers and/conversations, and the evangelist in me wonders where all of these people are when it comes to any connection with Jesus and his thrilling announcement of New Creation? What we know from polls is that there are at least a couple of countervailing tides spiritually in this emerging generation. One is that there is a whole lot of disenchantment, or disillusionment with so much of the church. Another is that there are Christian communities who are reaching a whole new generation of fresh and contagious believers. We also know that we no longer assume that those around us have ever been exposed to any Christian or Biblical vocabulary, since they have never had any contact with the Christian faith that connected with them. We call this a post-Christian culture.

I’m particularly sensitive to these folk because I have some of those post-Christian neighbors whom I really and dearly love, and with whom I enjoy conversations over leisurely meals. But because I am so thoroughly formed by my lifelong Christian and Biblical engagement, I tend to use, routinely, a lot of Biblical and ‘churchy’ jargon. When I do, I also routinely get stopped in mid-sentence and asked what I am talking about. I realize that I unwittingly speak a different language. And yet these dear friends, whom I love, are such authentic persons, and such caring and thoughtful folk. One Christian writer has designated such persons as sojourners, i.e., spiritually confused God-seekers.

All of which makes me wonder this: If one of these friends were, on some Sunday morning when he or she had nothing else to do, to bite the bullet, and think: “What the hell. I think I’ll go scope out one of those churches and see what it’s all about.” So they turn up on the back row in a community of strangers—what would they see, hear, and experience? I think those are really, really important questions for any church that is serious in engaging in the mission of God.

One writer (N. T. Wright) proposes that there are four quests shared by most human beings—and certainly by my dear neighbors—the first is a quest for justice, then a quest for spirituality, then a quest for relationships, and finally a quest for beauty. Another source comes at it from the perspective of three common human anxieties, which are defined as the anxieties over meaning (what does my life mean?), the anxiety over acceptance (does anyone care that I’m here?), and thirdly, the anxiety over hope (what lies beyond what I can see, and beyond this life?).

There are a whole lot of churches which have become immunized to their own message, and are content to gather habitually, and to mouth the words, engage in the traditions, but don’t come close to answering the above human quests. Many habitues of such churches remain essentially untouched by the radical teachings of Jesus. Such will never reach my sojourner friends.

But then there are others (usually new church plants) that have not forgotten why they are there. They celebrate the church’s New Testament faith, and appreciate its traditions, but are always aware that they are there to be a radiant display of the divine nature, they regularly speak to the human quests and questions, and so regularly embrace those sojourners, and explain to them what they are doing, and also making clear the distinction between faith in Jesus, and unbelief—and do it with true sensitivity and compassion.

The question should always be on the front burner with church leadership: When sojourners take the plunge and visit our gatherings, what do they hear and experience? Jesus and his thrilling promises of new and transformed life (justice, true spirituality, new relationships, and beauty), or just some form of “religious Christianity” (to quote Bonhoeffer again)?

BLOG. 4/15/13: POST-EASTER … “UPROOTING AND PULLING DOWN”

I want to continue a discussion I started in my last blog …

For those of us whose whole formation has been in Christendom church institutions, it is near impossible to imagine the disorientation of those disciples of Christ during those immediate post-Easter days. The reason is that we have all too much reverted to their pre-Pentecostal mindset.

Let me explain. Jeremiah’s prophetic commission from the Lord was: “See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). In a very real sense, Jesus, as the great prophet of God to this age, did exactly that. What he came to do was so radically other that even his own most intimate disciples had no categories for it. Even though they had seen him do all those signs that the prophets had said that the messiah would do (heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, feed the hungry, raise the dead, and preach good news to the poor), even though they had seen the miracles and walked in his company … and even though they had heard him repetitively prophesy his own necessary suffering and death, somehow they couldn’t connect the dots after Easter.

Yes, and even though they had heard him predict the destruction of the temple and to declare himself to be the true temple, and though they had heard him tell them that suffering was a part of their calling and that if he was hated, so would they be hated for his name sake—yet they were still wedded to the traditional image of the messiah as some kind of a ‘knight on a white horse’ who would reclaim the glories of the David throne.

They had no capacity to hear or imagine a messiah who would be arrested, tortured, and killed by a collusion of temple authorities and the hated Roman occupiers. Much less did they have any capacity to even entertain the insane notion of one raised from the dead. They had no capacity to even comprehend one who would root up, pull down, and destroy the institutions of Israel, and then build and plant something unimaginably new and dynamic and redemptive of the design of God for the world.

So on that Easter Sunday and in the days that followed when he kept appearing suddenly in strange settings, they were still trying to connect the dots. This is obvious right down to those moments before his ascension, when they asked if he would at that time restore the kingdom to Israel. He only told them that they would understand when God would visit them by his Spirit, and that they must wait until that happened.

The wild ride that followed Pentecost all confirmed in their minds what Jesus had taught them all along. They quickly understood why he had to suffer and bear the sins of the world, and how he reconciled the world to God by his blood. And they understood that the Temple and its leadership were no friends, but would quickly persecute them as Jesus had predicted. And they certainly had never comprehended that the new community of the Kingdom of God would not be a homogeneous, pleasant, comfortable, carefully ordered and controlled religious institution—but rather that they would be launched out of their comfort zone into a real world, and that every one of them would be an integral part of this thrilling new creation called the kingdom of God.

Somehow the darkness has seduced the church back into a pre-Pentecostal misunderstanding of itself, of Jesus and of the mystery of the ages revealed in and through him. It has been taken captive by its own temple mentality, what with its professional priesthood, and that allows its ‘members’ to be passive, rather than rambunctiously involved in the obedience and suffering that will cause this gospel of the kingdom to be declared into every nook and cranny of this vast global human community.

 “Root up? Pull down? Destroy? Overthrow? Build? Plant? New Creation? … Why not?

BLOG 4/10/13. WHO SHAPES THE EMERGING WORLD, THE FUTURE?

I am totally fascinated by David Burstein’s recent book, Fast Future: How the Millennial Generation is Shaping Our World. David is one of those millennials who is incredibly well informed and creative himself. At the same time, the question comes to my mind, as a follower of Jesus: Isn’t changing the world exactly what Jesus had in mind when he called his followers, from the very beginning? After all, he did come to inaugurate a new creation, i.e., to “make all things new.”

But somehow you’d never know this by hanging around all too many Christian communities. Their inhabitants love being together, but frequently have no sense of any compelling mandate of what they are to be about when they are scattered into the realities of their 24/7 lives. I have a proclivity of asking new people, whom I meet in church gatherings: “What do you do besides come to church gatherings?” I often get a double-take, and then the response: “What do you mean?” … which, of course, gives me the opportunity to remind them that we are together for a couple of hours once a week, but we are still God’s people scattered for about another 160 hours (or however the math works out).

Burstein sees the millennial generation as a generation of both realists, and of pragmatic idealists. That would be a pretty good description of the followers of Jesus if they had read their New Testament documents carefully—salt of the earth, light of the world, incarnations of God’s New Creation, recreated into the image of Christ, agents of justice, love, mercy, compassion, meaning, hope, and a rambunctious expectation for the world and the future. Maybe we ought to toss in here, the fact that we are also called to the glory of God and excellence (II Peter 1:3).

The church, in its better manifestations, does exactly that … but it easily gets distracted, and hides in sanctuaries, and becomes subservient to church professionals and to security, and to passivity, and to religious Christianity.

Burstein also makes a major point that the millennials are total realists, and that their pragmatic idealism does not make them, in the least, myopic about the very real and complex problems facing the global society in the 21^st century. If anyone should be equipped to be realistic about his world it should be God’s people, who understand where and how it became so screwed up in so many ways.

The purpose of the church’s gathering together is to mutually encourage and equip each other for the week before us. We mutually reinforce each other for our weekly mission of “shaping the world” through adoration, through confession and a reminder of our forgiveness, through the word of Christ being taught so that it dwells among us richly, and through our gathering at the Eucharist—all to refocus us on the fact that the church is the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity, and that our lives are to be the demonstration of God’s design for his new humanity.

My friend, the late Pete Hammond, used to remind me (rather pointedly) that if I couldn’t see beyond my sermon notes, and to where he and the men and women before me would be on Thursday afternoon … and if he and those folk in the pews couldn’t see beyond my sermon and teaching to where they would be on Thursday afternoon, and how it all equipped for the realities of the week … then the word and sacrament were without effect or meaning. You can argue with that if you wish, but he makes a great point. How about: “Fast future—how Christ’s church is shaping our world?”

… To be continued.

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BLOG 4/4/13. MILLENNIALS: “CHANGING THE WORLD” … AND THE CHURCH?

As the readers of these blogs know, I’m somewhat fascinated by the emerging Millennial Generation, and the fascination grows the more I study the phenomenon.

One of them, a gifted young writer and filmmaker by the name of David Burstein, has recently written a book: Fast Forward: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the World. Stir into the mix another creative young guy, Jeff Hammerbacher, who has put together a data-cruncher called Cloudera and it gets more interesting. Then throw in this guy, Nick D’Aloiso, who at fifteen years of age put together another news scanning program, which he sold to Yahoo for millions of British pounds, … and it rather takes away one’s cynicism about the future. The sheer creative talent, and the civic spirit, of those 18-30 year old folk portend some kind of interesting future. And they are optimistic about all the potential of the future into which they are moving.

My question, then, would be: What will the millennial generation do with the church? If they see no problem with changing the world, then what about changing the church.

One dimension of the answer to that question is that the church is enigmatic to many of them. News articles of late speak of the rapidly growing number of “nones,” i.e., those who are not at all atheists, but don’t identify themselves with any Christian tradition. How will the Christian community relate to such a generation of pragmatists, and creative change practitioners? Is the church community ready for a change that will create forms previously unknown? Can church communities recognize their transience—that they may be fruitful for only a short period, and are not to create permanent institutions? Would this emerging generation within the church be ready to divest the church of its vast holding, and get on with its mission of reaching men and women with the awesome message of God’s love in Christ?

Or what of citizen/member participation that eschews hierarchical (clergy) control, and chooses rather to be a significant part of the ministry and mission? You’ve got to remember that this is a generation that stays connected, but often without community—yet at the same time longing for authentic relationships.

I could foresee that this might be the generation that actually goes back to basics, and asks the questions (so often buried in the vast ecclesiastical paraphernalia) of what the church is intended to be in the mind of Christ, and why?

And do you know what? There are communities of Christian folk that actually have already moved into this new culture and are permeating their neighborhoods, and cultures, and proving to be salt and light in ways that my (octogenarian) generation never imagined.

Who was it said: “Behold, I make all things new?” Does that only happen sometime in the future? Or is that future possibly looking us in the eye at this moment?

Stand by …

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BLOG 4/1/13: ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING … AND SERMONS

Let me chase a crazy question here. First of all, we have a generation emerging who have cut their teeth on iPhones, on mobiles, and have access through their apps to a vast array of information, and have connections through social networks internationally, so that even language is no longer a barrier, since that other languages can also be accessed by the click of a button.

Then, let me enter the fact that we have also learned a whole lot about how people receive and process information. We know that a straight over-the-board lecture is the least effective way to communicate information. More and more instructors (college professors, etc.) are posting their lectures on-line and inviting comments and questions. Enter on-line classes, what with on-line chats and community groups, and the possibility of interacting with others in the context of a professor’s previously posted lecture.

Next: It is now fairly commonly agreed that the emerging millennial generation prefers participatory learning in which they are part of the process. They want dialogue, and the freedom to be an engaged part of the educational experience.

Those who have researched and developed all of this understanding are not denying that there is still a very essential place for face-to-face contact with a teacher, and personal interaction with others in the classroom experience.

Toss in the whole fascinating dimension of such on-line learning, which is designated asynchronous, which means that the learning experience is not captive to a schedule. The distance/on-line person can go off and have lunch, do household duties, then come back and pick it up where he/she left off. The chats with others in the distance-learning group, likewise, can take place without the personal interruptions making much difference. It means that you can go and look up information in the midst of the experience. The desired result is to most effectively communicate information, both in the giving and receiving dimensions of this. It can engage me with the professor, or with other participants halfway around the world.

One of the startling results of the research by one of the pioneers, who is a professor in a California university, is that students, who took a course on-line, with this kind of asynchronous potential, did better on the course than those who took the same course in a traditional classroom. Subsequently, further studies showed that perhaps a combination of both was the most desirable and effective long-term.

Got it?

So here’s my question: It has to do with our tradition in the church of a preacher standing in a pulpit and delivering a 20-40 minute lecture, called a sermon. Are we missing something here in reference to those who are ostensibly the recipients of the sermon? Is the preacher missing key points? Is the sermon unrelated to anything in my life that I can identify?  Do I have any way to raise questions, or offer additional information? What if the sermon sucks? Is the preacher responsive to criticisms, suggestions, questions, or contributions? Am I a passive captive to a tradition, or is there some way I can be a participant in the process of having the word of Christ dwell richly in our community, and in my life?

I often sit in a congregation and look at all the young adults looking at their iPhones or iPads and know that some of them also have three different versions of scripture on those, or a commentary by N. T. Wright … or they may be tuned out, or streaming some other really helpful preacher from somewhere else on their mobiles.

There are some really good examples of  teaching-pastors who have risen to this challenge. Its an idea worth chasing, I think. To be continued …

BLOG. 3/28/13: THE SUPREME COURT, THE CHURCH, AND HUMAN SEXUALITY

For the past couple of weeks the news media have been focused on the two cases before the United States Supreme Court having to do with same-sex marriage. I feel like living dangerously today (I may regret it tomorrow), so I think I’ll take a stab at entering this discussion. Why not?

First of all, the Supreme Court is the final court for the United States, not for the Christian church, though the United States is the scene of our incarnation, albeit as “pilgrims and strangers” or “aliens and exiles.” In its integrity, the church is always a counter-cultural community. But the church all too often forsakes its prophetic calling in the moments of cultural uncertainty, and retreats into silence. I’ve watched this happen during civil rights days, during the restive youth culture rebellion of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, and during questionable wars in which the nation was engaged.

It is my own (note) observation that the church has long been totally unrealistic about the whole area of human sexuality. It has been cowardly, escapist, superficial and irresponsible in coming to grips with the whole beautiful meaning of our creation as sexual creatures, and our creation in the image of God. As I read the Biblical account, as a Christian-theist, I see from the very beginning God bringing into being this whole creation, including the human community and declaring it very good. The crown of that creation was the human community—originally that first man and woman—created in his own image and likeness. God created them in beauty and joy and freedom and with the capacity to reflect the intimacy of the Trinitarian community.

And one of the awesome dimensions of that creation was their capacity for sexual intimacy, and reproduction. God created them, not as solitary creatures, but as creatures designed for relationships with each other and with the Trinitarian community. God created their genitalia, their hormones, their explosive and ecstatic experience of orgasm (don’t blush) … and declared them all good. They were to be mutually affirming, to seek the welfare of the other, to be interanimating, to rejoice in each other, to live without secrets or shame. Their bodies were gifts. He created them (to put it another way) with the gift of sensuousness. Sexuality was a beautiful gift, and it was sacred. It was a quintessentially fulfilling relationship.

But … then something went badly awry. When those two succumbed to the temptation to defy God and to seek to be their own gods, a devastating self-focus entered—maybe brute selfishness. Rather than being beautiful and mutual and sacred, their sexuality became exploitive and controlling and self-focused. Suspicion and accusation ensued. And it went downhill from there.

But Easter says to us that Jesus has come to deal with all of the negative effects of the human rebellion, and to inaugurate a new creation, and that God in Christ is alive and powerfully at work in the world … and part of that new creation has to do with the recreation of true sexuality. Yet when the church countenances sterile, loveless, sometimes destructive heterosexual marriages, and too often condones adultery in its leadership, or pedophilia in the ranks—even when it seeks to avoid the true sexual dimension of God’s creation by requiring the celibacy of the priesthood—it has a difficult time when its comes to dealing with so many of the more exemplary, loving, and and caring relationships within the gay-lesbian community.

For too much of the church, dealing honestly with sexuality is avoided as not appropriate to talk about in church. All of this in a culture obsessed with sex in the media, in on-line pornography, in the seriatim affairs of entertainment and sports personalities.

Have I answered anything? Not really. I only wanted to raise the church’s confusing behavior (silence?) in the face of such a compelling issue that confronts us.

BLOG 3/25/13: EASTER AND “BRAINLESS TOURISTS ON A PACKAGED TOUR”

OK, I confess that having been in pastoral-teaching leadership within the Christian community for a long a time (maybe too long), I may look at what takes place on Easter in most churches, and not take it too seriously. This is especially true is one takes a serious and intelligent look at what the New Testament teaches about the resurrection and its implications for church and for those who are serious in their discipleship.

It reminds me of the classic (and humorous) work of novelist Annie Dillard in which she says: “Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute … On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with the chemistry sets, mixing up batches of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, 1988. P. 40).

Does that sound strange to our ‘consumer Christianity’ ears?

Listen, then, to Paul’s take on the resurrection: “[I pray] … that the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of [Christ], having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints [that’s us], and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead …” (Ephesians 1:15-20).

Can we hear that? Paul is saying that the same power that raised Christ from the dead is now at work in us by the Holy Spirit, and by that power God is enabling his people to live lives that are totally unexplainable by merely human definition, i.e., “to be strengthened with power … to comprehend … to know … that surpasses knowledge … be filled with the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14ff).

Annie Dillard had it right. Easter—Christ’s resurrection—unleashed into the world the power to create all things new, to empower the church to storm the gates of hell, to make known to the principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God.

But, if Easter is only brainless tourists on a packaged tour into the Absolute, folk doing their annual Easter morning ritual (as far too many will), then they will have missed the point that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead literally unleashed the powers of the age to come into the world, so that Christ’s church is energized for the mission of God in world—and that through the daily lives of God’s true people. They will have missed the message completely. It is not just life after death that results from the resurrection, but true lives of gospel obedience lived in Christ’s resurrection power right here and now in our lives, in the midst of the brokenness of this present context, and in the midst of those whom Jesus came to seek and to save. Question: Have we become totally immunized against that understanding of the resurrection?

Crash helmets? Safety belts? That sounds more appropriate. Easter is the beginning of God’s new age. Don’t miss it.

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BLOG 3/21/13: BONHOEFFER AND POPE FRANCIS

In his first mass with the cardinals after his election as pope, gathered in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis made some pointed comments in his homily that reminded me, for all the world, of some similar teachings in the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer some 75 years ago. The new pope reminded the assembled “Princes of the Church” that if they did not have a passion for Jesus, and the gospel, and the cross … they might be cardinals, or archbishops, or priests, or religious—but they were not disciples of Jesus Christ.

Ah! There’s the point: a passion for Jesus and his cross.

Is it any different with any of the millions of those of us who inhabit church communities, sit in the pews, engage in all kinds of quite commendable church activities and identify themselves as Christians? Is it any different with those multitudes who inhabit pulpits, and are called “reverend”? Are we truly Christ’s disciples?

Unbelief in the church—or participation in the church without a passion for Jesus that is contagious and knowledgeable—is a devastating pathology that eviscerates the whole mission of Jesus Christ that is to be carried out by his church.

In the 1930s, the young theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was struggling with the inner-contradictions he was observing in the German church in its complicity with the emergence of Adolph Hitler. Out of agony of soul that he wrote his classic (in my view): The Cost of Discipleship. Chapter 18 of that work is entitled: “The Great Divide” and is one of the most demanding calls to the essence of authentic discipleship I have ever encountered. It is an exposition of the ending of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus tells his followers: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them,  ‘I never knew you: depart from me you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:21-23).

Bonhoeffer referred to what he was seeing in the German church as religious Christianity, i.e., the form and words but without the content, without the repentance and faith, without the love and passion for Jesus that results in obedience to his teachings. The church in Germany was captive to Hitler’s false gospel, and multitudes of church folk never saw it, and became totally complicit in the darkness of that period. But then, Bonhoeffer found something of the same absence of true gospel and true discipleship in the church in the United States during his tenure in New York in the 1930s.

This Easter season, with all the pageantry and rehearsing of the message of the resurrection … if it does not result in a demonstration of a passion for Jesus, and his cross, and the mission of God in the existential realities of our everyday lives … then, as Pope Francis would remind us: We are not Christ’s disciples. Or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would remind us by the very words of Jesus: “I never knew you. Depart from me …”

Somehow, our heart’s fervent prayer must be that we will be discerning of all that is hollow and fraudulent in church participation/membership that loves the ambience but misses the point—that we will never hear Jesus say: “I never knew you. Depart …” Jesus’ taught that it is those who have his word and do it, are the ones who are his disciples.

Thank you for the reminder, Your Holiness (or Brother Francis)!

BLOG 3/18/13: MY RESPONSE TO THE ELECTION OF POPE FRANCIS

I was asked multiple times last week (as were many of us) about my response to the election of Pope Francis (Archbishop Bergoglio of Argentina). Actually, my response was a part of a whole jumble of thoughts that had been occupying my mind. Earlier in the week I had been pondering an article in Salon about the Millennial generation’s response to the whole political process, entitled: “Don’t write off millennials just yet.” That led to another document: Government By and For Millennials.

A part of the conclusion of those articles has to do with the fact that this emerging generation firmly believe that government can and should play a role in solving society’s most urgent and complex problems, but they want a different kind of government which is more inclusive and more responsive—they want to be part of the decision-making process. They want to focus on common vision and common values … that sort of thing. They want to be part of the process.

If you stop and think about it, a significant part of the emergence of the whole field of information technology has come from such bright Millennial folk, as have the huge companies created by them. Or think of the fact that most of the so-called “fathers of our American government” (James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, etc.) were actually quite young, and so created a whole new form of government never before seen in the world.

Or, closer to the Conclave in the Sistine Chapel last week, think of the fact that St. Francis was a restive young adult when he initiated what became the Franciscan Order. Ignatius of Loyola and his peers were young, entrepreneurial, visionary disciples of Jesus and created the missionary order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), which included along the way young Francis Xavier, and later young Bartholomé de Las Casus (remember the movie: The Mission?). So nearly all of the Roman Catholic orders were movements of life and vision and mission initiated by young, creative, imaginative minds.

This is a generation that also is more at home with such esoteric new fields as chaos theory, and complexity science, and all of the implications of those frontiers of thought. And last week this old octogenarian was also trying to wrap my geriatric brain around those concepts.

Out of that jumble came this interesting thought: All of those Cardinals (Princes of the Church) in the Sistine Chapel were between sixty and eighty years old, and essentially captive to the patterns and traditions of the church of the past (many of which are quite commendable). But what if the make-up of that Conclave were to have been disciples of Christ, knowledgeable about the demands of discipleship (as recorded in the New Testament documents)—and between twenty and forty years old? What if they could look on church and world with fresh, new, imaginative 21^st century eyes? What if they appreciated the myriad of complex systems within the total Christian church, and how these systems were interacting with their cultural environments? Who would they have chosen as their leader, or would they have replaced the one pope with some creative new and composite understanding of the throne of Peter, that would both preserve the rich heritage of the past, but be able to respond to and appropriate and architect a new culture of interactive social networking and all of the realities of globalization?

Complex? No question. Easy solutions? No. But the one who is ultimately building the church is not any ecclesiastical hierarchy, but Jesus Christ. Oh, this could be a fascinating challenge to work on. That’s my jumble of thoughts, … which probably goes nowhere, but it resonates with many of my younger friends. Stand by.

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