Books as well

Family,

I have thought long and hard about what we can do with our webpage, and i want it to be a fully interactive site. I want feedback. I want ideas. I want your pics uploaded and shared. It is my vision that we will use this site to tell our story to those outside the walls of our church, but also connect to each other when we are not gathered together on Sunday mornings to offer ourselves to God. And as part of my hope to see us become more connected to God and each other, i will include, in a separate blog/post a list of books that i highly recommend and why i recommend them.

And if any of you feel led to read these books, i invite, no i ask you to post a comment at the end of each post, so that others can read your thoughts. I have been negligent in ensuring that we go deeper in our faith, and i have dropped the ball, on many occasions, but i am doing my best to steer us all down the road to where Jesus meets us and overwhelms us with His promise of abundant life. More than that, i am also doing my best to steer our community into radical discipleship, so that each of us can and will begin living for other people.

It breaks my heart to know, and i am as guilty as anyone, that Christians make the faith about what we want. We want a certain kind of music during worship. We don't like the sermons or dramas. We want to be coddled and babied. And we absolutely do not want someone to step on our toes and make us examine our lives, because we should and do have the right, as "Americans" to live how we want to. And this, sisters and brothers, is one of the reasons, i feel, God is allowing the church to decline.

I feel like i have beaten this dead horse, to a pulp, but i can't seem to shake the eery feeling that we are missing the point of what it means to be the church. Or maybe i am just lost in la la land and i need to be returned to reality. I dont know. But part of the issue for me, what is sparking my renewed interest, is a book that i have picked up and have enjoyed, page after page.

The book is titled, "Emergent Worship," by Dan Kimball. And i highly recommend it. It illuminates the needs and desires of young adults who are searching for God, but they can't seem to find God anywhere, especially churches. So Kimball addresses worship as a means to help young adults experience the Divine. But Kimball argues that worship isn't something we come to; it is something we do, as a community, after spending a week doing small bits of worship.

Whether those activities include a Bible study. A service project. Coming together for a meal. Whatever the reason, all week becomes a map leading us to Sunday's worship, when we can all offer ourselves to God. Kimball believes, and i echo his ideas, that the church is not a Sunday event, but a continues journey of developing ministers and disciples. His ideas resonate with my understanding of what the purpose is for every church. We are here to mentor, develop, and mature believers into radical disciples and ministers who carry God's Word into the world.

I suggest "Emergent Worship," to any and all seeking, desiring, hoping to find a way to reach a generation of people that have left the traditional church behind, desiring to find the new wine that Jesus promised.

May God's face glow upon you, illuminating your very soul..

Amen.