A little bit of light reading.

Over the past few days Jeremy and I've enjoyed exploring various church websites and reading about what God is doing across the country and world. It's always interesting to discover what God is doing, what churches think of themselves, and how they present themselves on their sites. I'm starting to notice a trend among church websites: most of them stink. Well, not stink but they aren't very atractive or user friendly, just too difficult to use and for the most part they aren't really intended for anyone that, well, doesn't already go to that church. Aside from all of that though, we've had a blast. It's just great to see all the fantastic missions, activities and ministries going on around the world today and we learn a lot. Today we came across a very powerful document on Integral Mission by Keith Zafren the lead pastor of The River Community Church in collaboration with the Leadership Team, advisory council and the staff of The River Community Church that had a most interesting quote by Tom Sine that led me to an article Tom Sine wrote in 1996. Here's just a sample:

"What is our life direction before we become believers? Upward mobility. What is it afterwards? Exactly the same. The only thing that has changed is that we are told in too many of our churches that God is there to help us to get up the mountain a little quicker - instead of us being part of what God is doing to bring righteousness, justice and peace to the earth.
Those of us in evangelical/charismatic and Pentecostal churches throughout the Western world are responsible for selling our young people the wrong dream. For all the talk about the Lordship of Jesus, we have sold them the Western dream with a little Jesus overlay. And it is a dream that is no longer accessible to them."

There were some very interesting ideas presented on these web pages, I'd love you hear your thoughts.

jmw