Thats RIGHT! I'm blogging 2 TIMES IN ONE DAY!!
Check out T Hunter's blog today.
This is the vision, foresight & dreamings that I was talking about yesterday.
Honestly, its not that I agree with Todd 100% on everything....but...how could you argue with this???:
Rant: �to talk in a noisy, excited, bombastic, extravagant and declaratory (to set forth or explain) way�.
Well, here goes, another first for Hunter�my first cyber-rant!!!!!
It�s been week since I last blogged. I didn�t have any inspiration. Even this morning my all-things-technology-coach, Eric, was imploring me to write�still no inspiration. Then I checked my email� I am normally a VERY patient person; ask anyone who knows me well. But, this (just so happens, Vineyard) pastor ticked me off. He told a lady in his church �he had problems with my �re-imagining� God.�
First, I�ve never talked or written about re-imaging God. I�ve talked AND WILL CONINUE to talk about re-imaging the church and what it actually means to be a Christian. I am not ashamed about trying to align my life with the aims of God with regard to his desire for an obedient people who would live in his Story as the ambassadors of his Kingdom. If this makes me dangerous, �unbiblical and questionable�, then bring it on!
I am in good company with all the reformers�not least Wimber. (I can remember when the Vineyard was reform and change minded, not defensive and protectionist of a past that will never be recaptured or relived. Get over it�do what your hero Wimber said, �take the best and GO!� Move on, grow, have his guts, don�t become like one of his many critics sitting in the stands commentating and criticizing while others are actually being players) Not that it ultimately matters, but I feel I am in line with Wimber trying to understand the full implications of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Doesn�t it make sense that if we are to do this it might require re-thinking some theology?
Second, bring before your conscious mind your imagination about God. Do you suppose that imagination is absolutely, 100% correct? If not, and I�m sure mine is flawed, what would be wrong, theoretically, with �re-imagining God�? I am a biblically and theologically driven person. I would never change except as guided by superior insights. I would happily admit to being wrong about something and change. Does this make me a dangerous person? I think the dangerous person is the one unwilling to change and grow as the Spirit gives more insight (See John 14-16, I John 2 & I Cor. 12-14). The questionable person is the lazy pastor preaching �Sermon Services� sermons and refusing to become a learner for themselves. No significant move forward for the church has ever came that way; nor can it.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine why anyone would be satisfied with �church as we have know it�. And aren�t current forms of church rooted in our imaginations about church/Christianity/God? Further, they are rooted in a �reality� that no longer exists in their former ways�modernity and Christendom. To quote my friend Brain Mc Laren, �if you have a new world, you need a new church�. Not in a pragmatic sense (at least not for me), but PM and PC provide a �prophetic� reason to re-examine our approaches to theology and church. Thank God, or I may have never done it. I may have stayed in the conservative evangelical reductionisms of �being a Christian means saying a prayer so that you can go to heaven when you die�.
How can anyone defend the �born again� church people like Barna (thank you George), Gallop and the sociologists of religion describe? And be sure, this form of religion is rooted in deficient ideas/imaginations about God/Jesus/The Spirit/their aims, etc. And if you can�t defend it, then darn it--get busy changing it! Forget the carping, fearful, lazy�I can�t do too much change --I might lose my paycheck�people.
Wow, rants sound more defensive than I like to be�oops�I guess I need to learn to rant.
Check out T Hunter's blog today.
This is the vision, foresight & dreamings that I was talking about yesterday.
Honestly, its not that I agree with Todd 100% on everything....but...how could you argue with this???:
Rant: �to talk in a noisy, excited, bombastic, extravagant and declaratory (to set forth or explain) way�.
Well, here goes, another first for Hunter�my first cyber-rant!!!!!
It�s been week since I last blogged. I didn�t have any inspiration. Even this morning my all-things-technology-coach, Eric, was imploring me to write�still no inspiration. Then I checked my email� I am normally a VERY patient person; ask anyone who knows me well. But, this (just so happens, Vineyard) pastor ticked me off. He told a lady in his church �he had problems with my �re-imagining� God.�
First, I�ve never talked or written about re-imaging God. I�ve talked AND WILL CONINUE to talk about re-imaging the church and what it actually means to be a Christian. I am not ashamed about trying to align my life with the aims of God with regard to his desire for an obedient people who would live in his Story as the ambassadors of his Kingdom. If this makes me dangerous, �unbiblical and questionable�, then bring it on!
I am in good company with all the reformers�not least Wimber. (I can remember when the Vineyard was reform and change minded, not defensive and protectionist of a past that will never be recaptured or relived. Get over it�do what your hero Wimber said, �take the best and GO!� Move on, grow, have his guts, don�t become like one of his many critics sitting in the stands commentating and criticizing while others are actually being players) Not that it ultimately matters, but I feel I am in line with Wimber trying to understand the full implications of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Doesn�t it make sense that if we are to do this it might require re-thinking some theology?
Second, bring before your conscious mind your imagination about God. Do you suppose that imagination is absolutely, 100% correct? If not, and I�m sure mine is flawed, what would be wrong, theoretically, with �re-imagining God�? I am a biblically and theologically driven person. I would never change except as guided by superior insights. I would happily admit to being wrong about something and change. Does this make me a dangerous person? I think the dangerous person is the one unwilling to change and grow as the Spirit gives more insight (See John 14-16, I John 2 & I Cor. 12-14). The questionable person is the lazy pastor preaching �Sermon Services� sermons and refusing to become a learner for themselves. No significant move forward for the church has ever came that way; nor can it.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine why anyone would be satisfied with �church as we have know it�. And aren�t current forms of church rooted in our imaginations about church/Christianity/God? Further, they are rooted in a �reality� that no longer exists in their former ways�modernity and Christendom. To quote my friend Brain Mc Laren, �if you have a new world, you need a new church�. Not in a pragmatic sense (at least not for me), but PM and PC provide a �prophetic� reason to re-examine our approaches to theology and church. Thank God, or I may have never done it. I may have stayed in the conservative evangelical reductionisms of �being a Christian means saying a prayer so that you can go to heaven when you die�.
How can anyone defend the �born again� church people like Barna (thank you George), Gallop and the sociologists of religion describe? And be sure, this form of religion is rooted in deficient ideas/imaginations about God/Jesus/The Spirit/their aims, etc. And if you can�t defend it, then darn it--get busy changing it! Forget the carping, fearful, lazy�I can�t do too much change --I might lose my paycheck�people.
Wow, rants sound more defensive than I like to be�oops�I guess I need to learn to rant.
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