Communities are the key

It's time for us to view our purpose not as maintaining our ministries but as transforming our communities. If this sounds like nothing new, read on...

It actually is nothing new. Except we haven't viewed church this way in many years in the West.

We live with a heritage of cultural Christianity, but the culture is moving on. It happened years ago in most of Europe, and it's now happening in North America. In the world commonly associated with the term "mission field," the concept of community transformation is not new. It also wasn't unfamiliar to the apostolic church. For most North American Christians, though, it's a way of thinking about our life and ministry that we're not used to. We can no longer view ourselves as living in a Christian culture where things can basically continue as normal. We live in a culture in desperate need of transformation; where the light of Christ will shine brighter than ever before if we but lift it up.

I don't know if you're as suspicious of the term "paradigm shift" as I am--it gets overused--but it fits this situation well. Read Eric Swanson's web-published white paper, Ten Paradigm Shifts Toward Community Transformation and see if you agree. Or check out Jack Dennison's excellent book, City Reaching: On the Road to Community Transformation.

More yet to come on this...

Posted: Sun - December 5, 2004 at 08:11 PM |

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Communities are the key

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson