Off to Minneapolis

Kristy and I are headed to Denver this evening to have dinner with her parents and stay the night at their place. Early tomorrow morning, we’re off to Minnesota for three weeks where we’ll connect up with some of Kristy’s family and financial partners. We’ll be taking lots of pictures with the new digital camera we recently purchased with some wedding gift money. Need to learn how to use it and figure out all the bells and whistles.

Hopefully we’ll have a chance to connect with some wi-fi action to give little reports and share pics of our time in the “land of 10,000 lakes.” I’d also really like us to visit Solomon’s Porch sometime while we’re there, just to see an expression of a “missional church” in action. Or at least one that is taking risks to pursue it’s missionary calling in light of the West’s shift away from Christendom.

With that in mind, today I got word from Phil Kingsley of an article in Time magazine, regarding house churches (or “simple church”). The report is obviously uninformed by any serious theological considerations, but reveals an interesting socioreligious trend in the West (the U.S. in particular.) And it begs a few questions:

• Can a philosophy of church that presents the pastor as the CEO and only dispenser of religious goods and services from the front of a large auditorium while the consumer body (i.e., congregation) stares at the back of each others’ heads – fully embody and represent the mission of God on the earth?
• Can church leadership be decentralized in a such a way as to still function in an Ephesians 4.11-13 fashion? (Actually, this is being seriously fleshed out by the boys at Forge.)
• Does the mega-church philosophy inherently override the principles of community and relationships and fellowship that it attempts to nurture through small group ministry?
• Is a simple/house church model just as susceptible to the trappings of consumer Christendom as the building-focused attractional church philosophy that is currently the dominant form?

And finally, the question that needs to be asked about these thoughts in particular: Is “socioreligious” even a word??

Categories: life, church, mission, Christendom