A mission question

What is God saying? How will I respond? These two questions - or one combined question, depending on your point of view - are the basis of a reasonably long post by David Fitch. It isn't a post that answers the questions as such, but it's a post that gives the reader a chance to reflect on whether these two questions are the most important mission questions we can ask....or not.

Fitch begins by looking at the way in which all churches come to a somewhat stagnating point - and even those who come to faith during that time and join the church don't quite come alive, but drift off.

Fitch says we need to keep asking ourselves what our purpose is - or rather, perhaps, what our purpose is within God's purpose. And he's not looking at this from an individual approach, but from a community (church community, that is) approach.

This is a thought-provoking article that deserves careful reading.

The decline of the emerging church?

In the online magazine, Next-Wave, Bill Dahl writes a challenging piece about the emerging church, its critics and whether it is or isn't 'declining'. (In fact, whether the church - without the emerging adjective - is or isn't declining. 'Decline' is a word I hate to hear, by the way, in relation to church - any church.)

Bill Dahl is a freelance writer from Redmond, in Oregon. Though I must say that his name isn't particularly familiar to me, his work has been published in dozens of national and international publications, websites, ezines, journals and newspapers. One of his websites is entitled, The Porpoise Diving Life, and if that has some sort of ring about it, the subtitle might explain: 'reality for the rest of us, or picking up where purpose-driven peters out.'

Dahl tends to avoid the 'black and white' approach to Christianity, the one bound by lots of rules and regulations, so he may not be everyone's cup of tea. However, I think he's worth checking out, either in what he says in the article on the emerging church, or in the book reviews and writings on his website.