… think it is representative of a certain comfort in chaos that the emerging church embodies that an overly organized, packaged and hierarchical evangelicalism has a problem understanding. It comes down to the perspective and expectation of the individual, perhaps based on their cultural experience and biases.

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I am constantly amazed where I find insight into my faith these days. As I have gotten into reading blogs over the last few months, I have noted that many of the responses and comments to the blog posts are where I am challenged most.

I read one post this morning that lead me to two other blogs and some comments that may just work their way into my worldview. It all started with my buddy Nick’s post on slang where he references a term “Snob Goggles”. By way of defining that term, he links to a blog entry of Jason Clark called I Like My Mega Church which is actually just kudos for a third article of the same name by Elizabeth DiCandilo at off-the-map.org.

I read her article and found it interesting but still do not look too favorably on the mega-church model and wondered if there are any comments that reflect any other opinions. That’s when I am side-lined by two concepts that really have made any impression on me, mega-church biases aside….
Continue reading “Insights from blog comments.” →

It is not the best written argument in Small Groups – Loving Sinners is Messy but Necessary but it does make me wonder about the fruit of the Spirit called patience (or longsuffering, if you’re a KJV fan) from Galatians. And it begs the question, am I willing to devote myself for the long haul to someone who doesn’t change right away?
Continue reading “Working through someone else’s sin” →

God knows where marriage fits into our individual lives to complete that purpose of building his Kingdom and drawing us closer to Him, all we have to do is trust Him. Harder said than done. It is the same in all the really big areas of our life, it is easier to know to trust God then to actually do it.

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Myths of Belonging

The Search to Belong is a about community, more specifically about the type and substance of relationships that form a community in the church today. It strikes me as a “what’s been done and what’s to come sort of book that emphasizes the paradigm shift of post-modern thought and how that relates to the church and the functions of community in it.

“Community is a complex creature. Many factors contribute to finding successful community. With the erosion of the geographically close family and the heightened mobility of our culture, many people struggle to learn healthy competencies for community.”
Continue reading “(Chapter 1) The Search to Belong – a review by chapter” →

An awesome article from Bert Waggoner at the Vineyard about the Kingdom of God, here and now, in us, and why that is.

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…the modern day, or post-modern, ‘P.C.’ mindset is akin to McCarthyism in all relational aspects. Whether it is our dealing with children, the opposite sex or homo-sexuals, current social norms strangle us, hindering relationships.

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