Sword Saints

Wednesday haiku

Point of fact: there is
no "global community"
apart from the Church.

Learning worship

Once upon a time it would have been the last place I'd have expected to end up serving, but Margo and I have volunteered for the ministry team that's handling worship at the Atlanta Eastside church plant. (No, we've not moved down there yet, but we are participating and waiting with hopeful expectation that that will be the case!) I hope that my bent toward theology and poetry and imagination and teaching will serve well to keep the liturgy and service planning planted in the rich soil of spirit and truth. It doesn't hurt that I also have an excellent sensei.

Reformat

My birthday gift to myself: I gave notice of my resignation at work. So it begins.

God willing, we will soon be moving down to the Candler Park area to join the Atlanta Eastside Project, a mission church being planted out of Perimeter Church. To that end, and for a variety of other reasons, Margo will return to work and I will stay at home with Nicholas.

Given the seemingly insurmountable hurdles (selling one house and buying another in this market, for one), it's already been quite the faith stretcher. But it's where we think and feel and believe that we're called, and so we must go, and trust and hope that God will show up and doors will open.

Dear church

A while back I had a brief email exchange with Sarah Cunningham about her then-forthcoming book Dear Church: Letters From a Disillusioned Generation. I liked what I read at the time and was looking forward to its publication. I got my hands on a copy and gave it a read. Good stuff.

She starts out with an exploration of why the twentysomething generation is disillusioned with the way church is done these days, much of which resonates with my own frustrations and angst (which only seem to be amplified the further I get on the "inside" ... sometimes ignorance really is bliss). But she gives us more than just a laundry list of complaints. This is the Church, after all, at the same time the Bride and the Body of Christ, the broken vessel that carries the hope of the gospel to all the world. All the hurts and frustrations and pains Sarah expresses are really just aches of love for a Church that seems to fall so short of what she ought to be.

This book coupled with an article from Touchstone Magazine on Karl Barth reminded me that, yes, the Church is actually an object of faith: "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church". And it is an object of faith that is unbelievable (and unworkable) apart from the Father's grace, the Son's headship, and the Spirit's ongoing work. Thanks for the reminder!

technorati tags:Church, Disillusionment, Faith

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The GA went down to GA

The PCA General Assembly is in Atlanta this year. Bart will be in town for the festivities, and Margo's fluting at the worship service tomorrow night. So now it's just a matter of figuring out how to get there from here on a Tuesday evening. Well, maybe it's more a matter of how to get there on time from here, lacking (as I do) any convenient form of teleportation.

technorati tags:General Assembly, PCA

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