Wrestling with the Church--part 1

This will come as no surprise but I've done a lot of thinking about the church the last 23 years of my life--what it means to be the church, what the church does, how to be effective as a church, etc. Over the years I've embraced some ideas about the church only to discard them years later as my understanding of the church changes or as culture changes, or both.

As Community of Grace is only 2 1/2 years old, we have the chance to truly shape our "church" from the ground up--to, from the beginning, live out what we think and believe the church to be.

So I've been doing a lot of reading and praying about the church and the kind of church God is calling us to be. Some of the things I've been thinking about have been confirmed again and again in my reading and conversations with other leaders. Some new ideas are emerging that I'm honestly wrestling with and what those ideas might mean for how we build our community of faith together.

The one thing that comes back again and again is this--to make sure we see ourselves as a dynamic mission rather than a static institution.

More to come