i met mark sayers for coffee in melbourne earlier this year...
he is a brilliant thinker and reader of the zeitgeist as well as someone bringing a good missions head to all the emerging church stuff.
he has just posted a piece 5 thing we got wrong in the emerging missional church. this is about the australian context, not the usa or uk. but there are excellent insights to learn from. it's the most thoughtful piece i have read about emerging stuff for a while. here are the headings but go and read the article.
1. Failed to define what is meant by “attractional”
2. Failed to define what is meant by “incarnational”
3. Being overly defined by a reaction to mass/popular culture
4. Failing to understand “low fuel tank faith”
5. Being wed to Gen-X culture.
thanks to scott where i picked up the link to the article who i met in tasmania and who has since started blogging on tasmission
really excellent article - thank you. The article he links to at the end on emerging church=gen x is also well worth reading. v challenging for us.
Posted by: richard | September 16, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Yes, some brilliant insights here and I think it raises an important question. I agree that being incarnational is more than joining an interest group and bringing up the topic of spirituality. But what actually does it mean to incarnate in the post-Christian West where cultural memories of Christendom still linger? And how do you incarnate into a culture which is post-Christian yet still holds many Christian values and which holds ideas and opinions on how Christianity should operate itself? Have we got any further with this one yet?
Posted by: David Derbyshire | September 18, 2008 at 11:28 AM