Envisioning the Congregation, Practicing the Gospel

Disciples, Osmer contends, might be better understood as “pilgrims.” Expanding this metaphor, he notes that pilgrims follow faithful pilgrimages over proven paths and journey toward desired destinations. Further, because most pilgrimages are beset with hazards and detours, pilgrim-disciples

of Christian discipleship.

They come mostly to check up on their friends and provide us with a few financial resources to keep their children off drugs and out of each other’s beds.”

“The primary objective of the participation of the church in the mission of God is, as expressed by Christ in his missionary mandate, to make disciples.”

Koinonia, or belonging

University of Texas sociologist Bill Bishop, in his recent book The Big Sort: Why Clustering of Like-Minded Americans Is Tearing Us Apart, claims that Americans over the last three decades have “been reshaping the way they lived. . . . In every corner of society, people were creating new, more homgenous groups. . . . Churches filled with people who

caring for others

need to belong to communities for instruction and support.

But in the United States, culture has transformed Christ, as well as other religions found within these shores.