Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Why reform and not create new a new church?
On a the praxis podcast D.G. made a comment as to articulate his calling to reform the Methodist church he said something (and I will not quote just summarize what I get from it):
We serve a crucified Lord, whoever said this work would be easy? Why is it there are some young people who run up against a polity which may make things difficult they stop? If we love the UMC then we must be willing to fight change the polity and not run from it just because it is 'difficult'.
We serve a crucified Lord, whoever said this work would be easy? Why is it there are some young people who run up against a polity which may make things difficult they stop? If we love the UMC then we must be willing to fight change the polity and not run from it just because it is 'difficult'.
YA Summit observations
The Fall Summit of the CTC in 2008, focused on young adult ministry. I met D.G. Hollums who is a "Cultural Architect at Th3 Waters" in Kentucky. He was a fascinating fella and I learned a lot from him. I cannot begin to type all that I learned but I know that his influence in my life (for the day it was) will shape my future. He has several blogs (the one to the left is his) and several podcasts (they guy podcast and praxis podcast are the ones I am most interested by). He and his Sr. minister, Gary, told me that if I had to read one book I should read:
The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church by Michael Frost
So I want to read that (I think that I added that to my goodreads book list, as well as organic church, and if the Buddha dated).
In another line on this summit, I ran across some quotes from people:
"I think altar calls are crazy. Asking people to come to the front and give their life to Jesus in one moment. I have never had a single relationship begin that way in my whole life."
"We live in a world of best guesses and not yets."
"For the word of God among us. For the Word of God within us. Thanks be to God."
"Third places are thin places"
The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church by Michael Frost
So I want to read that (I think that I added that to my goodreads book list, as well as organic church, and if the Buddha dated).
In another line on this summit, I ran across some quotes from people:
"I think altar calls are crazy. Asking people to come to the front and give their life to Jesus in one moment. I have never had a single relationship begin that way in my whole life."
"We live in a world of best guesses and not yets."
"For the word of God among us. For the Word of God within us. Thanks be to God."
"Third places are thin places"
Shane Claiborn - Irresistible Revolution
"As we practice hospitality, there comes a point where the suffering around us drives us to ask what it would take to reimagine the world. We've all heard the saying "Give someone a fish and they'll eat for a day, but teach them to fish and they'll eat for the rest of their life." But our friend John Perkins challenges us to go farther. He says, "The problem is that nobody is asking who owns the pond." As we consider economics, some of us will give people fish. Others will teach people to fish. But still others must be looking at who owns the pond and who polluted it, for these are also essential questions for our survival. We must storm the fence that has been built around the pond and make sure everyone can get to it, for there are enough fish for all of us.