I think when the whole blog and emergent thing started people thought, we were on the verge of a great move forward in the church BUT this has not happened as far as I can tell.
Nonetheless, a dramatic change in theology (hopefully toward a coherent kingdom theology that understands what it really means that Jesus is the promised Christ) and discipleship practices is needed to revolutionize the church.
I believe more that ever that the church is to be a new social order as expressed in Acts 2 and 4. These early pictures of possibility have been hijacked by a theology of other worldliness that seems to hope for Christ to come in the future more than a celebration of the revolution that already happened. It seems to me we feel our death will be more liberating than Christ's death. Christians still live in bondage and yet they are the only free people on earth.
Our new freedom is to be expressed in a lifestyle of simplicity and generosity, and, yet, we lack the distinction that living in a kingdom social order prescribes. Are we able to say as the early church did that there were none who lacked? Do we live in a social context of daily interdependence in the church? A new definition of family? Are we immersed in the presence of God as a people?
Instead, we wait.
Today, the Arab world is struggling to find its voice and its ideology. So too, the people of Christ remain locked out of the kingdom by a lack of imagination and courage.
peace, brad
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