Comments on: What’s Emerging?

By: Dave Ellerby

Dave Ellerby — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:41:41 +0000

I’ve had recent experience of coming out of my Pentecostal Pastor role into a free-fall, simple house church expression which has allowed my wife and I to hang out with other denominations where I have ministerial colleagues. One such church has been the CoS. We also dropped in on the Church Without Walls conference at Ingliston earlier this year. My observation would be that some practitioners within the CoS speak in a very radical way, in terms of engaging with commnuity beyond the building and to a certain extent have done so with a variety of expressions ranging from homework clubs to full-on community services. However, that is all still done in the context of big machine doing something whilst hanging on to it’s structure.It remains [ albeit disguised ] a ‘Come To’ rather than a ‘Go To’ model. What is needed [ imho ] is for the legacy or institutional churches to liberate their freer members and thinkers to BE amongst communities in such a way that the loving relational dynamic between individuals who love Jesus for all their worth are given the opportunity to simply touch lives with no agenda at all, no projects or declarations, simply a going out amongst friends and families and neighbours. That way any whiff of power/control or politics will not be in evidence and hopefully people will be reached by love. I have found that many non-churched people are very wary of “The Church”, and yet have many questiosn and issues which they are keen to explore, but only with real people. While ever the churches are percieved as flawed machinery interested only in money and control, we are not only alienating large sections of the public but also denying our own people the joy of participation and fulfillment in following the Great Commission.The denominations have much still to do, have done many great things till now, but there needs to be a depth, breadth and efficiency in these days which can only come by trusting the soldiers and freeing them up to be Jesus every day, every where, every way they can be inspired to do so.Sorry if that’s a bit garbled…as usual, time is limited.YzDave

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:10:35 +0000

Sounds interesting Stewart…I have been thinking a bit recently about this centre/fringe thing… I think we need both- but I am very glad no longer to be part of the centre (most of the time!) large organisations just gather too much baggage to be able to move anywhere easily. The COS seems to me as an outsider at least, to be like a grand dad trying to break dance! The result may well be a dance, but it will look very different to the stuff that happens on the street.Not that I can break dance (although I can break things dancing!)But as per earlier conversations, people on the fringe are very vulnerable… and it is so easy to get lost in the mess of this wonderful world that we are called to live within.Look forward to hearing more.BlessingsChris

By: Stewart

Stewart — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:59:53 +0000

Hi Dave! Glad you happened by. Feel free to add your thoughts!

By: Dave Ellerby

Dave Ellerby — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:17:08 +0000

Dear Stewart,happened on your blog about three hours ago. Currently in a frenetic time pressure but have enjoyed and agreed with what I’ve read so far. Got to rush but I’ll be back - as the Good Austrian says!