Jordon Cooper has recently written a blog post entitled, Losing My Religion. It becomes plain from what he says that it isn't Christianity that he's losing so much as the form, the endless theological debating and a bunch of other things. The blog post is more of a thinking-out of his position than anything, and a huge concern that churches are often more like a Kiwanis service club than a community belonging to Christ - and therefore belonging to their neighbours. Here's the final paragraph, which comes after he's told us more than once just how many prostitutes, druggies, pimps, gangs and traffickers there are in his neighbourhood....
Over fifteen years ago, columnist Paul Jackson wrote in The Star Phoenix that the church had abandoned it’s role of social services provider – taking care of widows and orphans – to the government during the 1960s and 70s. As the economies in North America struggled to pay for their new obligations, Jackson felt the church needed to step up again. It hasn’t happened yet. In fact most trends show churches walking more and more away from those difficult tasks and instead continuing to move to younger and younger suburban neighborhoods and therefore away from the problems. It may be great church growth doctrine but what about the neighborhood and that you left behind. The east side of Saskatoon has twice as many churches per person than then west side does. Guess which side of the city has the higher concentration of wealth and guess which side has the core neighborhoods in it. I’ll let you figure it out.
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