A Family\’s Journey from Suburban Vancouverites to Albertan Church Planters
28 Jun
In addition to the huge workload I have this summer just for the church, I have this paper to write. I am completing a graduation essay to attain my Master’s of Arts in Christian Studies from ACTS Seminaries at Trinity Western University. My chosen area of study is church planting in resort communities. I am actually at a bit of a disadvantage because my program does actually have a church planting specialty, but because I have a whole pile of credit from when I was pursuing a church history master’s, I didn’t have room to take those courses from the Seminary. However, I don’t know how many people who take that course area actually involved in the leadership of a brand new church plant either, so maybe that balances it out.
Anyway, I have a ton of reading to do to research this paper. I am probably reading slower than I should. Normally when I write a paper, I find resources and skim them until I hit upon the areas that I need to include for my paper’s subject. Instead, I am actually reading the whole book as I know that ultimately, it will serve me better as we think about planting our own church one day.
So, currently I am chewing through the 360 page Ed Stetzer tome, “Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age”. Although the resort community seems to be a microcosm or an ultradense monoculture of postmodernism, there is no question that the overall societal trend is towards this philosophy or worldview. It is good stuff. I am just looking at the “generation” question right now and he made a very good point - with postmodern cultures it is almost irrelevant to speak of ages as having anything to do with their worldview anymore. A postmodern could be of any age and they will have more in common in that case than with anyone just close in age to them. Limiting oneself to a “generation” will not serve the cause of Christ when it comes to these people.
I’d write more but a) I have to actually work on the paper, and b) I have to ride my bike over to get the van out of the shop. Bye for now.
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What Love is This? Calvinism’s Misrepresentation of God by Dave Hunt
Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer
101 Ways to Reach Your Community by Steve Sjogren
Essential Church?: Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts by Thom S. Rainer