The Emergent Conversation

Today I’m meeting with a group of 5-6 ministers. They call their monthly meetings “Mission Tri-State” I met with them last month, but could only spend an hour getting acclimated to the group. It’s a two hour get together. Because I'm stingy with my time I find it difficult to give up two hours. But today I plan to stay and put out a feeler. Maybe it will be worth posting their thoughts on what's said when I introduce them to the emergent conversation. Not sure how they’ll respond.

I found this quote on The Century Christian.

The mainline churches are facing their own crisis involving declining membership (especially among younger generations), clergy shortages, and deep polarization over issues such as human sexuality. The very churches that had sought to be relevant to the modern world (each in its own way) had become irrelevant to and ill-equipped for the postmodern world.

Overshadowing the sense of crisis, however, has been a contagious sense of opportunity—a belief that the time is right for churches to reshape themselves as thoroughly missional communities. Doing this will require moving beyond the sterile polarities that have defined the church in the modern era: liberal vs. conservative, traditional vs. contemporary, reason vs. experience, faith vs. science, megachurch vs. maintenance church.

[read the article]