So, um, why are we here?
I still don't know why exactly I'm creating this. It's really a mixture of different ideas. First of all, I have gotten on the emerging bandwagon. I guess it started out like this.
I've been a church-going, Bible-believing Lutheran all my life. I also grew up being hideously bored in church. It really seems to me a miracle that I'm still a Christian at all, sometimes. When I look back at my spiritual development, I see a lack of being challenged to be the Christian that God wants me to be. However, I did grow up having people who loved me. Honestly, I think that love kept me around the church, but it didn't do much to help me grow much in my faith.
Skipping ahead a few chapters, worship was never something that really interested me. It was always something I did, but it was something I just did. I didn't know why I always went, aside from that's just what Christians do, and I'm sure it's in the Bible or something.
So as I grew older, those reasons didn't really make as much sense to me. I wanted more from life, and more from worship. I wanted more than mindless repetitive liturgy, more than spoken words, more than the contemporary worship offered for seekers. I wanted something that engages the whole me, some way I could love and worship the Lord with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind. I never experienced that until I went to my first "emerging" worship service.
I guess that it's really that joy, that experience that I had that I know others are yearning for. Even other Lutherans. I really get the feeling that my generation, the Gen X of the LCMS (and even Gen Y) wants to get beyond the ghosts of seminex, beyond "church politics," beyond the empty fighting and beyond the empty rituals that have marked the past. We want to move into the future, to recognize both where we come from and where we are going, and that we are part of a church that extends beyond Luther and Walther, back to Christ, and around the world to wherever the gospel is taught and the sacraments are administered in their truth and purity. We want to focus on who we ARE, and move beyond who we are NOT. We are children of God, we are the future, we are not only the Christians of tomorrow but the church of today.
We take Pauls words seriously in 1 Timothy 4:12: "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity."
Welcome to our journey of faith.
I've been a church-going, Bible-believing Lutheran all my life. I also grew up being hideously bored in church. It really seems to me a miracle that I'm still a Christian at all, sometimes. When I look back at my spiritual development, I see a lack of being challenged to be the Christian that God wants me to be. However, I did grow up having people who loved me. Honestly, I think that love kept me around the church, but it didn't do much to help me grow much in my faith.
Skipping ahead a few chapters, worship was never something that really interested me. It was always something I did, but it was something I just did. I didn't know why I always went, aside from that's just what Christians do, and I'm sure it's in the Bible or something.
So as I grew older, those reasons didn't really make as much sense to me. I wanted more from life, and more from worship. I wanted more than mindless repetitive liturgy, more than spoken words, more than the contemporary worship offered for seekers. I wanted something that engages the whole me, some way I could love and worship the Lord with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind. I never experienced that until I went to my first "emerging" worship service.
I guess that it's really that joy, that experience that I had that I know others are yearning for. Even other Lutherans. I really get the feeling that my generation, the Gen X of the LCMS (and even Gen Y) wants to get beyond the ghosts of seminex, beyond "church politics," beyond the empty fighting and beyond the empty rituals that have marked the past. We want to move into the future, to recognize both where we come from and where we are going, and that we are part of a church that extends beyond Luther and Walther, back to Christ, and around the world to wherever the gospel is taught and the sacraments are administered in their truth and purity. We want to focus on who we ARE, and move beyond who we are NOT. We are children of God, we are the future, we are not only the Christians of tomorrow but the church of today.
We take Pauls words seriously in 1 Timothy 4:12: "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity."
Welcome to our journey of faith.
posted by Jed at 9:25 PM
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