The ((((CHURCH))))

What is it? When I say a "church planting" in the first entry on this blog, what does that mean?

In my mind it's another big group of people meeting on a Sunday morning, singing some songs, and listening to a preacher. What I think we're all looking for is much, much different. Maybe that ((((ASSEMBLING)))) is a part of it. But at a deeper level I think we're stumbling onto something very, very different, and much more costly.

We are (or at least I am), looking to shed the 20-some years of Christian subculture I carry with me... the assumption that church must be ((((DONE)))) in one specific way, when I actually believe it is not something to be done, but a group of people to be ((((LIVING)))). It is giving up our guilt-ridden mental hangups and living as Bruce said earlier, with total and unabashed honesty before God and each other. In this honesty we will begin to ((((LIVE)))) differently and as an overflow the honesty will spill out into the lives of those we ((((ENGAGE)))).

It will take absolute ((((COURAGE)))). But I think it's worth the ((((RISK)))).

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