Church

So I just started reading The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.  Don asked me and Dev to read it as part of a missional movement that is growing out of PC.  I resonated with the first chapter so intensely that it almost brought me to tears.  I'm not sure why I identified with it, because I haven't had any of the experiences the author was describing. . .  Maybe it was my soul telling me that this would be an outcome for me if I continued living my life the way I have.   . . .interesting.


A couple months ago, Nate walk up in Burrito Bandito and told me that God highlighted Devanne and myself for involvement in a church planting lifegroup. So there's this other book called The Multiplying Church by Bob Roberts Jr. that the lifegroup is studying.













Both of these books are about a different kind of church planting than I have ever thought of but always felt called to.  Both books describe a church as starting with a group of friends talking about God, and then continuing that way, but growing.  This is a huge challenge for my mindset, because I love the music/art production of it all and often thing of that part first.

So the question on my heart today is: Why aren't Adventists planting churches any more?  There seems to be an Adventist church in pretty much every town, so at some point there must have been quite a bit of church planting right?  So why did it stop?  Has the Adventist mission been completed?

It seems like our churches should be getting pregnant and having babies all over the place if the heart of Christianity is as transformational as Jesus thought it was.

I am getting the feeling like some of us (all of us?) have misrepresented this gospel thing in a very profound way.

I do believe that if we (the church) represented God more accurately, all humanity would be looking in awe at this beautiful thing and would be reaching for an encounter.

We need to fill our role as ambassadors and then restart the church planting movement.