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Week after week, they heard the gospel preached from the Old Testament to the New Testament.  As Doug said, “It began to change the way we thought about all areas of life.  We realized the gospel impacted every aspect of our lives.  Our lives took new meaning.  It was and is exciting.”

Great ending to the book.  While not necessarily encountering much that I haven’t already been exposed to or thought through, I do so appreciate Belcher’s efforts to bring unity to what is increasing becoming a factionalized evangelical church.  Some of my criticisms still stand.  I still think this is largely a young-ish American white middle to upper-middle class conversation.  I’m just not sure how much people who fall outside this demographic really care about the sorts of things being discussed here.  That said, he is communicating my own feelings about what the ideal church looks like.  In short, I think Jim and I could hang together.

However, I’d like to take this opportunity to focus in on the last eight words of the first sentence of the quote above:  “from the Old Testament to the New Testament.” It is no secret that the Old Testament is massively neglected in most churches, and for that reason, most church attender’s lives.  And yet, I love what is being affirmed here:  The gospel shines through the whole of Scriptures, and not just the relatively small portion towards the end.

Starting January 1, I’m embarking on a new reading project…  the Bible.  All of it.  In a year.  Crazy, I know.

Trust me, I realize that that isn’t really much all that revolutionary about doing this.  I’m confident that there are millions of people who read their Bible all the way through every year.  J. I. Packer is famously quoted as saying, “Every Christian worth his (or her) salt reads the Bible cover-to-cover every year.”

While it won’t be the first time I’ve read the Bible all the way through, it will be the first time a several years that I’ve done so.  Part of what drew me to the project wasn’t just the my personal sense of needing to do so, but to do so with others.  So, I’ll have several friends doing it with me.  Men that I meet with on a weekly basis.  Students with whom I do the same.  Probably some co-workers.  Other people from church.  You know, some of the same folks who just attempted to finish Deep Church.

I’ve been asked by at least one person to consider blogging the entire project.  I’m not making any commitments yet, but I will ponder it the next few days.  So much I’d like to say, and so little time to do so.

By the way, if either of you who read this blog are interested in joining in on the Bible reading plan, I’ll be following this plan from Bible Gateway.

Loved this quote towards the end of the chapter where he tells the story of a member in his congregation as an individual who embraces this vision.  He happens to be the mayor of Anaheim, and he is seeking to restore a sense of beauty, vitality and community to the city’s downtown.

Using the principles of the free market, he convinced the city to rezone the light-industrial area around Angel Stadium to create a city center filled with apartments, shops, boulevards, cafes and offices.  Anaheim, like many suburbs in California in the 1960s and 1970s, wiped out its historic downtown, replacing it with strip malls and parking lots.  The city and its community have suffered ever sinc …  [The mayor] wants to reverse this trend and bring back a thriving downtown, which will bring back residents and a strong sense of community.  He is promoting the shalom of the city.

So once again, we return to this idea of salvation being more than just an individual’s personal experience with God.  As important as that might be, it is too small a salvation for what God envisions. 

I especially appreciated this example, because of an interest I have in community and dwellings places that promote that.  Just received an unexpected gift this Christmas that explores this whole idea even more, The Architecture of Community by Leon Krier.

Shalom out.

Jeremy Larson – Purgatory

Let’s try to make this short and sweet.  Big words like “ecclesiology” have a way of turning people off.  And the church has often turned people off.  And talking about the church can do the same.

I share Belcher’s opinion that neither the emerging church (or churches trying out new forms of church) nor the traditional churches have a rich enough appreciation for what it means to be the church.  However, I think the conversation needs to move away from simply talking about structure or praxis and towards ontology.  Or in other words…  what does it mean to be the church?

Not that churches don’t need to be challenged to re-look the way they approach their life together as a church.  They should.  In my opinion churches need to be constantly reminded that they don’t exist simply for themselves as an institution.  That they move from an inward focus to an outward one.  The ways we approach evangelism or church discipline or discipleship or any other host of issues need to be examined and when necessary adapted.  However, those things don’t necessarily define what a church is.  They are what we do; not who we are.  And although sometimes mistaken for the same thing, it isn’t.

A few years ago, the church I’m involved in re-looked at who we were and who we were hoping to become, and here’s the statement we came up with…

We exist to mobilize a racially-unified family of God, called out as the presence of Jesus in our world, to pursue His mission: all people reconciled to God.

Now, I realize that even this well-thought through statement doesn’t plumb the depths of what it means to be the church.  And while there might be a word or two that I’d go back and change, there is so much that I appreciate about it.  Each phrase matters.  All the important pieces are there.  It is a good length.

But most importantly it is right, and I have the sense that those of us who are most deeply invested in our local body believe it is right.  It is a statement about who we are (becoming) as a church.  And it is one that actually guides our practice and to a certain extent our structures.

This is going to sound a bit trivial, but… I love this church.  I really do.

It isn’t perfect.  Nor are we pretending to be.

Ok, so much for short.  But it is sort of sweet.