What the heck

It has been a dry couple of weeks for me as I have not posted very much. Part of it has been my life getting a bit busy but also me just feeling a bit dry.

I'm in Princeton, NJ for the week at a Youth Ministry symposium. It's been really good so far. Yesterday I had the opportunity to hear Darrell Guder speak and it was as good as I'd hoped it would be.

Today I was in a number of seminars but the one that really stands out for me was led by Tony Jones . Tony made my head hurt today with his thoughts about mainline denominational churches and the downward direction they are going.

Part of his talk hit the of bureaucratic part of most mainline denominational churches pretty hard. Tony comes from a mainline background so he's able to get away with poking at the church. What made my head hurt was that I agreed with him at almost every point. I see the problems with the church, I recognize the nightmare that we've created with our huge buildings, programs and staff. I know that in no uncertain terms our churches sometimes exist only to support the programs, pastors and buildings that we've put together.

The reality though is that I'm in a mainline denominational church and I want to work to help change the direction we are going and to make a difference. I don't see the passion, vision and hope of the emergent church movement as being something that we can't grab ahold of and use to transform our church.

But, my head still hurts. I want to dialogue more about this.

By the way Princeton is beautiful and I recommend going to Seminary here. I was eating icecream today and even in that endeavor I felt smarter just being here.

Comments

[petey*crowder]

Thanks for hitting up my blog earlier. I have to say that I'm jealous you got to listen to Tony Jones, but he'd make my head hurt right now too.

You can't mean to tell me that Princeton is better than GFES? :)

[brad brisco]

I jealouts about Guder, man I love everything he writes and says!