9/24/2008

Provocative Questions

Tom Sine’s new book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, gives solid practical examples of how Christians are living out a new vision of the Christian life through four new streams: Emerging, Missional, Mosaic (multicultural churches reaching out to new generations), and Monastic.

He asks some intriguing questions for our re-imagining life, faith, church, and mission:

“I find that many older evangelical Christians assume that all the important questions were answered decades ago and that we got all the answers right; now all we need to do is to simply improve our tactics and strategies. But as I look at the contemporary expressions of Christian life, church, and mission, I am not convinced that we have gotten all the answers right.”

Sine asks:

1. Did we get our eschatology wrong?
2. Did we get what it means to be a disciple wrong?
3. Did we get what it means to be a steward wrong?
4. Did we get what it means to be the church wrong?
5. Did we get what it means to do mission wrong?

These are very provocative questions! And I can hear the DA Carsons, Mark Devers, and Al Mohlers getting all upset with this line of questions.

But without asking these hard-hitting questions, we will never be a church “always reforming;” we will rest on our laurels and not be ready for the challenges that face us in the twenty-first century.

2 comments:

preacherman said...

Wonderful questions for each believer especially church leader to think about. I often wonder and ponder these questions. I think we should strive to be in tune with the complete will of God for our lives, and his church. We need to be people that are busy doing kingdom work. Building up and edifying one another. I think the crux of the matter is love. We must love God with everything and everything we do is motivated by love. Keep up the great blogging.

Ted M. Gossard said...

I agree, Bob. The task of trying to discern God's word in our ways for our days is never ending. And to understand it better at its core and roots.