God’s Call to the Emerging Church

Psalm 34 is an excellent call to make sure what we do honors and pleases Jesus Christ. It is His Church we build, and our local, creative congregation is a way to show His Way to others. It must be set in the reality and functionality of the precepts from His Word and Holy Spirit. It must be always pointing to the Work and Role of Christ and never a stage for us as its leaders; rather, it is to be a place of love and care for those who need to know Him. Being creative, being cutting edge is all OK as long as we keep the main thing the main thing: being a Church of Jesus Christ, LORD and Savior! This means Christ’s name is honored and His precepts are not watered down and not diluted seeking to please someone. Why? Because we are primarily His display case, His witness; we share Christ by showing Christ. We can’t do that if we seek to neuter our One True God! God is the One we exhort and extol and His lost sheep are the one we shepherd to Him with kindness and care. Going where they are in love and guiding them on a voyage of life to Know Him.

This emergent or youth oriented church is to know Christ first, to be radiant as this Psalm calls us to do. This means we reflect God with joy by our sincere devotion to Him, and our authentic love and hospitality to those we reach. We show His presence by being in His presence. If we do not, we are in darkness; in the shame of our depravity and dysfunction, we try to run a church without a guide trying to show others the way when we can’t seem to find it ourselves. This makes a church, even an Emerging Church, void of purpose or on a mission that is flawed, fake, and/or wrong, just what those we seek to invite do not need or are already running from. We should not seek to make more obstacles and dysfunction; they already have enough of that. We must bring reconciliation and the love of Christ instead. We must seek Christ in prayer and in His Word to make sure what we are doing or want to do is right and honoring to His name.
If we get too carried away with our ideas and miss Him, what are we really doing and who are we really serving (Psalm 31:16)?

Every generation of Christians has this problem of learning how to speak meaningfully to its own age. It cannot be solved without an understanding of the changing existential situation which it faces. If we are to communicate the Christian faith effectively, therefore, we must know and understand the thought forms of our own generation.--Francis A. Schaeffer (Escape From Reason, Introduction)

What do you think?

Read more here: http://www.churchleadership.org/pages.asp?pageid=66944