Sublime

an effort to know our town, our church has created a series of forums in which local community leaders share their perspective on the needs of our town. We thank them for what they’re doing and prayerfully consider how we can serve with them.

This is a key problem. As Guinness identifies, many of our churches have bought into the modern American consumer mindset in which we understand ourselves primarily as consumers and our churches as service-providers.

Has our faith become so organized and so structured around buildings and times and labels that the church is a place that we go to instead of something that we are? To be devoted to one another means we lay down our lives for one another.

One of the many reasons my wife and I want to plant a church is because it is the very place to foster such virtues and practices! The church gathers to announce that even in the midst of feeling disoriented, demotivated, discouraged, and disembodied, God has not abandoned us.

In a season that is marked by so much death and distance, we confess our