Tuesday, February 22, 2005
More on Church Change
Milt Stanley of Transforming Sermons picks up on my post (in response to his) concerning change in the church.
The problem, I should have made more clear in my original post, is not with maintenance per se, but with the social-club mentality that so easily creeps into churches. Part of our emphasis should indeed be inward, but not simply to make ourselves more comfortable. Christians are called to be disciples, to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, and to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.I agree that inward focus in not about comfort, but I have a somewhat different vision for church. I think church is to equip individual Christians, and is therefore, in a sense, primarily inwardly focused. Those individual Christians are to be the outward focus! God, in the form of Jesus, came to us. We in turn need to go to the world, not expect it to come into our doors. (More on this idea in my next post!)
