Sublime

Modernity’s wager means that God has been made a useful element in our own agency.

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

But at this moment in the life of the Euro-tribal churches, we need to balance our primary posture of ecclesiocentrism and discern where the Spirit is calling us to go lightly and participate in the life of the neighborhood.

• As we join with people in our neighborhood, are we seeing fresh ways God is already at work? What are we seeing? • Are we being transformed by this experience? What is

Discernment is different from analyzing a neighborhood and then deciding how to meet some related need. Such research and response is not wrong, nor is helping others an improper form of Christian action.

themselves at or near the center of North American society. 2. Beginning in the mid-1960s that period came to an abrupt halt. The unraveling had begun and it produced increasing levels of anxiety. The churches engaged in more than fifty years of efforts at church growth, health, and renewal, all to get back to their normative location at the center

Experimenting gets churches out of the ecclesiocentric default of having all the answers, all the resources, all the control. God is ahead of us, and our churches are remade and communities change as we participate with God. Taking these small steps can lead to a huge impact.

They pursued growth with gusto, expanding new church development, filling seminaries, and extending corporate denominational structures offering cradle-to-grave, branded programs that branched across the continent.

The 1940s and 1950s, while influenced by fears of external threats from Communism, were a golden period for these churches.