Beginning…
4 years ago
So it's finally done! The document I've taken 6 months to write is done! Hoorah!
"Becoming a Body - Rethinking Church" is a quick introduction to my current thoughts on Church, on being Church and doing Church. It's an introduction to the way that I'm going to do my future thinking about Church. Finally, it's an invitation to others to also think differently about Church.
The content of this document is going to seriously impact what we're looking to do here in Looe.
There really isn't much to show for it, but it's been difficult to get the content and tone right. Please understand that this isn't an attack on the way things are for the sake of it, but after incendiary thoughts were planted in our lives we had no choice but to investigate and we liked what we found.
To take a look for yourself, please visit it online here: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AShn8L9WHtTlZGM2azMydjZfNjdjdmR6NzlnNA&hl=en_GB&authkey=CLq8qr4B
Please feel free to make constructive criticism or to comment on the content - but if you don't agree, let's be grown ups and talk about it, rather than hurling insults at each other ;-)
God bless and happy reading!
Hi folks
Friday just gone marked a year of us being here in Looe. I have to be honest it's been nothing that I expected! My problem is, I'm impatient - I wanted everyone to be saved in the first week...
When we came here, we had very new and developing ideas about simple (or organic) church that we felt would impact the church we felt we were sent here to plant. The existence of a strong (and large) bible-based, Jesus-centred church on the outskirts of Looe really through us (as did the fact that God had seemingly sent so many people here over the last 3-5 years).
It turns out, God really wants to start a simple church network here and He wants Grace Community Church (and all the people He called here) to be involved. It's exciting, but it raises some challenges.
We came here with no ties to a specific church to cause political issues, but we're now engaged in helping the Christians from Grace break out of their church without politically breaking away. It's not exactly fun, but we're making progress. God is good!
In the meantime, as an introduction to the concepts of simple church, I have been writing a document since March (on and off) which is finally nearly ready. I've just got a few people kindly proof-reading it for me and should be able to publish it soon.
One thing the document highlights is that as Christians, we should be careful not to set too many limits as these often limit the growth of the body - one such important limit is the uncrossable border of denominations, so in light of that I'm going to start looking at networking with as many local Christians as I can get my hands on!
On a different subject, Street Pastor training has finally started! The Liskeard and Looe Street Pastors should hit the streets shortly before Christmas!
A couple of prayer requests, if you wouldn't mind:
- Please pray for the Street Pastor training
- Pray for progress to continue with regards the simple church network in Looe
- Pray for results in our networking