Over the past few months, I have been engaged in a conversation with the EFCA about my desire to help start new churches. As part of the application process, I had to write up my vision of what the church(es) I would start would look like. As Cindy and I are still a good three or more years out from doing anything non-academic, what I see is necessarily and unfortunately vague. Unfortunately because the church is such a particular, concrete reality, it's difficult to see it apart from its particularities.
At any rate, it's been a good exercise in clarifying what really are my core convictions about the what it means to be the church. I think the heart of my past reflections on church (see my old blog post here) are still present, but I've had to work some reconciliation between my natural anarchist bent and the need for institutional structures for the church to be both workable and faithful to what the church is.
Confusing? Read on...
