Talking Points for Relevant Faith Communities
Faith communities wanting to stay relevant through the 21st century will have to undergo radical reconfiguration to remain a viable entity. This will require us to move from tweaking to totally re-tuning, from re-forming to totally reconfiguring, from focusing on ministry (which almost always implies inside the four walls) to being a movement, from centripetal to centrifugal, from being ministers to be missionaries.
Here are the talking points for like faith communities:
adapted from Ron Martoia's notes
1. Are we fully convinced that salvation is process or does it occur in some event and point in time? If salvation is more process than event—do we have the sort of vehicles in place that encourage the process or only assist people for a point of decision? Process evangelism in this emerging world may look very different than our point evangelism of modernity.
2. How we use biblical and extrabiblical terminology and our understanding of missiology and the kingdom are watersheds for the next edge of the emerging church.
3. If relational apologetics replaces the rational apologetics of the 20th century then what does the new relational apologetics look like? Ron Martoia has said, “People seek to believe (the quest for meaning), belong (the quest for community) and become (the quest for hope and a future).” If this is true, how do we tap into these core yearnings and help move the conversation toward Jesus?
posted by Fred Peatross @ 5:59 PM
3 Comments:
Hi, Fred.
Good summary here. I noticed on a Google search that you're taking some hits from your less abductive fellows in the CoC. For instance: http://www.piney.com/FPRSpectacle.html was pretty vitriolic.
Hang in there and keep up the good posts.
Fred,
I think it was irresponsible of modernist church types to remove process salvation from our vocabulary. The idea that salvation only occurs at fixed point in time is dead wrong and leads to the kind of lack of discipleship that is the elephant in the church's living room.
But it is also irresponsible for pomo church types to remove point salvation from our vocabulary. The notion that it's all a journey and there is never a point where Jesus calls for a commitment -- well, that just doesn't jive with Scripture.
It cannot be either/or; it must be both/and. Right?
Agree. Any point along the continnum of time is as important to God in the process of salvation. The death of a parent may play as significant role in one's salvation as the culminating event.
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