The priority needs to be given to those activities which directly proclaim the gospel, such as the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. I keep hearing about churches trying to re-focus, re-define, re-organize, re-start. Typically, this is an effort to define the church’s mission statement in terms of a target audience, a style of worship, a primary message, or a primary service. Rarely do I hear about a church re-focusing on the gospel. For as much as I struggle with the phrase, “purpose-driven”, there is some truth to it: the church’s purpose is to proclaim the gospel, to seek and save the lost – to its current members and to those still outside. That purpose is accomplished through the Holy Spirit and performed in the grace of God under the cross of Christ – not by our ernestness or enthusiasm.

Would you or anyone else be willing to respond to my comments from yesterday @ 6:33 pm? I’d like to know if I’m understanding the use of these terms (evangelical, post-evangelical, the coming evangelical collapse etc.) correctly or not.

Thanks.

It seems that in my dad’s diocese, what has typically happened, is that the bishop and other ministers (the candedate’s e.g. local priest/pastor/presbyter, the local vestry, the local deacons) meet with the candidate to discuss their calling. If they’re qualified and their calling is affirmed, they become a transitional deacon for some OJT time before becoming a priest/presbyter. Again, I think the transitional deaconate is usually for a year or so.

Each denomination (and sometimes diocese) will have their own way of doing things, and each case is unique. But I don’t see someone looking at a minister ordained as a Baptist and saying that their ordination is invalid. It’s just that each group will have their own specific requirements that must be met.

brilliant.

This was met with what seemed like a great deal of discomfort, and statements such as, “Well, then you let the Catholics in, because they believe the Apostle’s Creed”, and so on and so on (they used other denominations/traditions as problem-child situations, but I can’t remember them all, but it included issues like infant baptism in the Lutheran church, and all sorts of other “concerns”).

I kept saying, “exactly!”. Well, in the end, it didn’t go that well as far as them understanding my point.

Then I arrived home and saw that my order had arrived from Amazon and Frank Schaeffer’s new book, “Patience with God” was in the mix with other non-Kindle-available books (grrrr). I opened it up and noticed that one of his chapters, Chapter 7, was entitled, “The Only Thing Evangelicals Will Never Forgive is Not Hating the ‘Other’”, to which my immediate gut response was twofold: firstly, it rang sooo true based on the discussion I had just come from, and secondly, we often can’t even agree on who “the other” is, but we know they’re out there and they’re anybody who isn’t “just like us”!