Future Church III

Finally finishing Wesley Frendorff's vision for the Church

Let us dream of a a church...

In which discipline is a means, not to self-justification, but to discipleship, and law is know to be a good servant but a very poor master.

A church....

In which every congregation is in a process of becoming free--autonomous--self-reliant--interdependent.

None has special status: the distinction between parish and mission gone.

But each congregation is in mission and each Christian, gifted for ministry; a crew on a freighter, no passengers on a luxury liner.

Peacemakers and healers abhorring violence in all forms (maybe even football)
{JIM HERE IN AN ASIDE--THIS ABHORRING FOOTBALL DOESN'T WORK FOR ME....} as concerned with societal healing as with individual healing; with justice as with freedom, prophetically confronting the root causes of social, political and economic ills.


A community: an open, caring, sharing household of faith where all find embrace, acceptance and affirmation.

A community: under judgment, seeking to live with its own proclamation, there fore truly love what the lord commands and desiring His promises.

And finally, let of dream of a people called....

to recognize all the absurdities in ourselves and in one another, including the absurdity that is LOVE,

serious about the call and the mission, but not, very much, about ourselves,

who, in the company of our Clown Redeemer can dance and sing and laugh and cry in worship, in ministry and even in conflict.



That's the whole thing. Remarkable. Painfully obvious and even more painfully distant from us.
I fear and mourn for the church in these days. We need a new paradigm, a new vision, a way to be transformed and be made new.

Bp. Frensdorff's words are a beginning, a challenge, something to lean into, to seek, to long for, to desire, to work toward.

It all seems so distant--his vision--and so different from the Church as it is....

But it is to be ponderer under your Castor Oil Tree...something to fuss with God about...something to dwell on.

More about the church later....

Love you all....