Saturday, July 28, 2012

"The end of the church as we know it" -- food for thought from Baptist pastor Amy Butler

h/t to Bishop Michael Curry who recommended this article from the Associated Baptist Press on Facebook:

Our work is not to control the trends of society or to prop up a comfortable model we’ve become accustomed to. Our work is to make faithful disciples of Jesus Christ: to bring the gospel to the world, to nurture people in their faith, to live as good stewards of what we’ve been given and to bring justice and peace to a society desperately in need.

We’ve done all these things with varying degrees of success for years and years with members, money, programs and buildings. Now, with this new reality confronting us, how can we continue to make faithful disciples of Jesus Christ?

I think it’s an exciting time for the church. Society has handed us a reality we’d hoped we’d misread, but instead of lamenting our plight or struggling to get things back to the way they used to be, think of all the possibilities that await us. The church as we know it is in decline, it’s true. And we anticipate the future with the assurance that God, most certainly, is not.

Read the rest here

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