I was raised in the Church of God in churches that our doctrine was taught and preached. Taught meaning sung out of our hymnal, arguably the only thing close to written doctrine that we have. I think there some good attempts, but not labeled as such because of our heritage. doctine and creed are really spelled with four letters.

I think we were wrong. Did we really think that we could go on and do ministry and be fruitful without anything to rally the troops/gather the flock/RA RA the team? "The Bible's our Doctrine" ya, ok, good one. Isn't it and hasn't it been for billions of Christian's over the centuries? What is unity than? So some guys got together a long time ago to agree on some things about our faith. Isn't that what we're supposed be about? Being the Body. One body with many parts [Romans 12]. I guess that's just been our way of seeing it. Creed evil, Bible good. But I think we missed something. God used us humans to write the Bible, and to build his Body. So could it be that a creed is simply agreed upon Christian faith cliff notes? If that's so, what's so E-vil about it? People coming together to agree in prayer about what we believe and live out. That resonates with my ChOG experience, how about you? I know in the time we launched our flegling movement there was a lot of people doing church becuase it got them status of some sort. I know that the more human's interfere with God's will the farther we can go off track. But, wouldn't agreement in the Spirit be something to be valued?

That was the long way to this...

Scot McKnight, uber prolific blogger Extraordinaire, has a series on this. Here's the first post. I'll probably update this post with other articles by him. Emerging and Orthodoxy


other posts by McKnight on this: Emerging and Orthodoxy 2, Emerging and Orthodoxy 3, Emerging and Orthodoxy 4

“People expect you, as a believer, to have all the answers, when really all you have is a whole new set of questions.” - Bono

here's a new link, thanks to Scot McKnight. Didnt' read the whole blog yet but I like what I read. enjoy.

My friend Nick Fiedler and Josh Brown interview Brian McLaren, and talk about The Secret Message of Jesus, and Jesus' government policy. LINK

When I've come back to ministry from a mission trip I've had the same thoughts and feelings: We do a lot of meaningless things in our ministries. Meaningless compared to what students and I just did in Mexico with Amor Ministries. We gave people a house of their own in 5 days. Something they could lock and close the window on. Something the've never had before. In the average 5 days, what do we do to impact the world around us? Is there anything close to what we did in MX? How the heck do we change that? Most the people in my area have homes and food. Most have good jobs and nice cars. What do they really need? What do people on your block need? What do the people on the blocks around your church need?

If you subscribe and haven't just subscribed in the last two months, could you re-subscribe? I'm now using Feedburner, which will give stats for traffic, and number of substribers, stuff like that. I would like to have a real number of subscribers and I know that a few of you grabbed the feed when I first started it, maybe a year ago.

thanks for your help.