Emerging church

I'm currently doing some study on the emerging church. This is something I wrote in my journal today:

I wonder if the problem with all of this thinking and all of these church movements is that we’re asking ‘what does church look like?’ and not ‘what does a Christian look like?’ We have made faith a consumer choice, like any other, and are trying to make church an attractive choice.
How about if, instead of starting with non-believers and seeing what kind of church would apply to them, we had a clearer idea of what Christians look like, and completely focussed our churches around who and what what we want Christians to be. We might find that:
- We do accept diversity
- There are some areas where we don’t accept diversity
- The church necessarily becomes missional at a ‘grassroots’ level – one of the attributes of a Christian will necessarily be that they are missional.
- We won’t feel the need to ‘convert’ everybody (the early church didn’t), but we will have a desire that everyone who encounters the church lives differently.
- There’s far less chance of having a ‘bad’ church – you should have a church filled with good people! (in theoryland)
So, a ‘good’ Christian will be:
- Someone who really loves God.
- Someone who really loves others.
And as a leader, I need to model this. I need to love God and to love others. A challenge.