So what is church? Part 1 Church, a simple but powerful idea…
We kicked off this short series on the church by looking at the relatively new but rapidly growing phenomena of churchless faith. I wanted to start with that post because the word church increasingly has a lot of emotional baggage attached to it. For many it smacks of control, abuse of power, manipulation, politics and thought control – a rather alarming set of associations. For others it conjures up images of boring Sundays, or of irrelevance or perhaps of sectarian squabbling. Much more positively, for large numbers the images are of spiritual growth, close community, God encounters,...
Read MoreChurchless Faith
I am about to embark on a short series on the church – and what it might mean to be church in the third millennium. This opening post looks at the increasing phenomena of what is being called ‘churchless faith’. I briefly touched on the topic in a post which proved popular, Churched, Unchurched and Dechurched, and I’d like to explore it a little more today, as very close to the surface it raises a multitude of questions of what it means to be church (and part of the capital C universal Church). So what is churchless faith? It is usually understood to mean that someone...
Read MoreChurched, Un-churched or De-churched
A shorter post than usual today, but it poses some pertinent questions about those who are de-churched… Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. If you’re up with the discussions on the future of the church you’ll know that commentators distinguish between people who are un-churched (as in never had any significant contact with a church) and those who are de-churched (as in once were involved, but no more thank you very much). While the church has always worried about those who are unchurched (they’re the reason for the missionary movement), the de-churched have had a mixed...
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