It's been awhile

Well, let's get back to this.

Our journey has certainly been one of discovery. If I had described for you what I had in mind when we started and then showed you what we know now you would see how long we've come. I am very thankful for that but I am frustrated as well because it can tend to feel like a volatile place, bounced to and fro by the latest insight. The truth is - i am not a native postmodern and its values do not flow from me intuitively. I have to filter it all thru this emerging matrix in my mind and heart that has been informed by study and relationships with people who are. This has meant a slower road for us. Unfortuantely the old adage still lives, "speed of the leader, speed of the team."

Yet there is also the danger of over-reaction, i.e. idealizing things and losing the practical prespective that makes it "work." i know I have done this. A case in point is our growing understanding of the ineffectiveness of "attractional ministry" in reaching a post-Christian context. I believe it and have long felt the incarnational ethos is part of what God is up to with this generation. Yet the attractional element remains dynamic and helpful with Christians. We have lost quite a few people off of this team because that distinction was lost in our zeal and people who may not yet be able to embody incarnational mission could at least still be with us on an attractional level and come to grow into this ethos over time. One level of entry ends up excluding. It is an accidental elitism.