the emerging church.

<>I just finished The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball, and wow! it was a great read. for the past two weeks I couldn’t put it down (often sacrificing reading for school to get through this book!). the whole time, I’m thinking through FCA and what we do in “worship” every Sunday night, and I hope that we can make some changes to how we do things to help foster a more sincere worship environment and guide people along their faith journeys more effectively. more than anything in the world, I want the people who walk through those doors on Sunday night to experience God, whether they’ve experienced God before or not. we’re a long way from that now, but i think that in a few weeks time, we can make significant changes.

Then last weekend, in the midst of reading this book, I visited Cedar Ridge Community Church in Maryland. Much of the service was the same as other Protestant Christian churches I’ve been to. But the two unique things I saw were:

• the seats in the auditorium wrapped around three sides of the stage that Brian spoke from. it gave a much more intimate feeling.
• the stations set up around the auditorium give a great interactive aspect to worship–no more of this sitting in a chair for an hour while somebody on a stage sings and somebody else on the stage talks.
  

I think when churches began to make church less consumeristic, less about people coming in to “get fed” and more about growing together in a journey to follow Christ, Christians everywhere will benefit. and I know for me, life is more about figuring how I can better follow Jesus' example and less about putting the “right pieces” of Christian faith together so i can get to heaven. heaven will be great, but for now I’m here and God has a whole lot left for us to do here before we get to heaven.