Emerging Church

I'm reading "Emerging Worship" by Dan Kimball... I'm really intrigued by what he has to say and am exploring this Emerging Church movement and concept. This paragraph stuck out to me as I think about the current church and how it's not making disciples, which is what we have been commanded to do:

"If Jesus were to look at how we spend our time during the week and how we think, worry, and make plans regarding the weekly worship service, what would He say to us? How much time would Jesus spend sitting in an office designing a worship gathering? How much time would He spend on other aspects of spiritual formation and the mission of making disciples? These questions I think we need to ask in the emerging church if we are serious about making disciples."

Jesus said, "Go into all the world and make disciples...," not "Go into all the world and make really big worship services with great music and really hot Powerpoint and a hip worship team that sounds like Coldplay." That stuff is cool, but yes, our focus in the past century has been on the gathering, not on the discipling that should happen during the week.

Hmmm. I'm very interested in this as a new church leader. We'll see where this road leads.

I'm also delving into Reformed theology a bit more. I was raised with Armenian thought mostly, but there's a lot of the Reformation thought that I don't disagree with. I guess I'm just at a place where God is having me really nail down my doctrine, something I've always just taken for granted. There is so much that it's sometimes overwhelming, but it's also fascinating to me.

Summer

We had our first Wednesday with the new youth group tonight. I'm finding that I'm starting to get used to the whole "I'm a youth pastor's wife" idea..... we've got an awesome group of kids with some really great potential. I'm already seeing some leadership potential in several. And they have personality as a group, which is really cool. I'd rather have an energetic group than a bunch of kids that don't talk at all, and these guys and gals are definitely energetic. There's spiritual depth as well, which is great. I'm so excited to see what God is going to do here. I'm praying that this little group will be set on fire for Jesus, and that these folks will be the spark that sets off a revolution for God here in Pipe Creek. There's certainly the potential, and with prayer and passion and willingness, I know the Holy Spirit can and will do it.

Quotable

"When emotion pulsates, the mind becomes deceived and conscience is denied its normal standard of judgement." -- Watchman Nee