I’m really excited about the new sermon series at my church starting tomorrow. “The Jesus Questions” is loosely based on Mars Hill Church’, “Vintage Jesus” series.
This is going to be our first big bash at being Missional as a church. We went out and interviewed a bunch of people about Jesus, Church, God etc and got a really good snapshot into what our community feels about Jesus.
Turns out, there is a soft spot for Jesus but a general disliking towards God, religion and the church - and this was gleaned from just 7 questions to 17 people! Over the next 9 weeks our church is exploring the main objections to the reality of Jesus and we see it as a major outreach opportunity.
Funny thing about all this is that our community is not “emerging” at all. It is ignorant about Jesus - not post modern at all. Many times when I deal with the Emergent Movement, I am staggard at how they place “emerging culture” as the god of reality - to the point where they allow this reality to determine what is authoritative in scripture and turf out all the tough passages.
The emerging culture hasn’t got the balls to deal with the barbaric mindset of a passionate Messiah driven by truth a passion to reconcile people to God. Everything is relevant in this “culture” and if it’s too hard to swallow, then they vomit it out. A classical example is the issue of sexuality.
The emerging culture needs to be known as a niche culture. It is not a dominant culture at all. Some parts of the world will see a more emerging culture, other parts will not. That’s why I see “Missional” as a better course of action. Missional caters for emerging cultures and at the same time every other culture it engages in.
My community is living in ignorance about Jesus - not rebellious to Him. I strive to be missional to my community as missional holds on to the authority of scripture, whether I like it or not, and presents God’s truth way better than the emergent “let’s glorify culture above God’s truth” mindset.
I know I’ll cop my share of Emergent comments - do me a favour and prove me wrong guys. But in the meantime, I invite you to have a look at the sermon series multimedia intro I have put together. In due course, I plan to post the videos on what my community thinks about Jesus. Our goal, as a local church, is to provide this content to the Pastors of our community to enlighten them as to what people think about Jesus.
Different indiwiduals, denominations and nations see and mean different things when using the words “emerging church”. i support you in that people do not know Jesus in the fillest sense - we tend to read what we want in the Bible and then put forward a image of Jesus to satisfy our “modern” way of thinking. Emerging should be to emerge from our own interpretation and tell people about Jesus in the total sense of the word! Yes, we must become missional in our actions, after all, every one of us are a disciple of Jesus!
Great video… and i have to agree with you on the emergent church. Missional sounds much better. You can’t pick and choose with scripture.