Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World

Taken together, these proposals were driven by a conviction that if you could bring together a mixture of a) the moods, music, and ethos of contemporary (that is, Baby Boomer) culture with b) the essential, Biblical form of the church, and c) invite the Holy Spirit to stir the mixture, then d) the churches would be fixed and could return to their p

Congregations see discernment as the individual work of a few “spiritual” people.

Discernment is simply a different way of seeing and being with your neighborhood.

The point is that congregations are no longer organized to practice discernment, outside of prescribed processes

Lutherans (Germany and Scandinavia), Episcopalians (England), Presbyterians (Scotland), United Church of Canada (Great Britain), Methodists and Baptists (England), Mennonites (the Netherlands and Germany), and so forth.

What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living we call “modern western culture

At the core of this change is the deep conviction that God is the primary actor who is out ahead of us in the neighborhood.

Fixing isn’t about a new imagination; it’s improving what we’re already doing. This is not where the Spirit is inviting us to journey.

habits, patterns, and values quickly resurface as we journey in untested territory. I have called them “defaults,” and make no mistake, they are powerful and go deep.