Saturday, July 25, 2009

Perfection

Singing Owl posted a great fun Friday Five this week:
Please pardon me for talking about church in the [Northern] summer when many of you may be on vacation. However, the church we are talking about today is the one you dream of. I've been thinking about this because I miss pastoring and preaching, because I am sending in resumes, and because...well...jut because. So have some fun with this.

Tell us five things that the perfect church would have, be, do...whatever.

We can dream, right?

Tempting to recite the solas but according to Facebook I'm only 80% reformed - they do influence my narrative but here, off the top of my head, are my top five:

  1. Theologically coherent. My perfect church has thought carefully about who we are, and what we do, and this is all underpinned by a sound theoretical framework
  2. Globally oriented ... part of the church universal and linked inextricably with brothers and sisters internationally. Today she is joined in anguish with the church in Fiji whose members are being arrested and taken into custody one by one.
  3. Grounded in place ... with a real and tangible and regular acknowledgment of and place for the first peoples of this land and where the imagery and music and language is of this place (where Christmas songs are hot and dusty)
  4. Wonderfully diverse ... reflecting the community in which she is placed in all its diversity of age, gender, lifestyle, marital status, ethnicity, creativity. In fact there are no walls between this church and the surrounding community: They are part of each other
  5. Socially active ... with clear social justice goals and actions happening everyday
And I know it was only five but all this is held together by a leadership team with the requisite gifts

2 comments:

Dorcas (aka SingingOwl) said...

No walls. Oh if it could only be so! I did try hard to decrease those walls...I succeeded a bit, but not nearly enough.

Mavis said...

Every step counts SO

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