Ancient Future Church- Being and Becoming

the Body of Christ Today

Conversation with the Presbytery of Denver Leaders

Rodger Nishioka, Ph.D.Benton Family Chair in Christian Education

Columbia Theological SeminaryDecatur, GA

Rev. Dr. Ralph WatkinsProfessor of Evangelism and Church GrowthColumbia Theological Seminary

What is the number one reason people

join churches?

•Every 500 years or so, the Church goes through a rummage sale.

St. Gregory590 C.E.

The Great Schism1054 C.E.

Protestant Reformation

1517 C.E.

What characterizes this rummage sale?

•Often includes a loss of power or place to the new and not-yet form that is rising.

•Author Diana Butler Bass calls this re-traditioning.

•Often results in a broader, deeper way of being the Church.

•This does not signal the end of the current expression of being the Church but rather a dramatic change in the expression.

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Source: Pew Forum on Religion and the Public Life (2012)

Of the 20 % who self-identified as none or no religion....•50% had no childhood religious initiation ceremony.•65% of those who are or were married had no religious marriage ceremony.•72% in their 20’s and 30’s.•78% said they believed there was a god or supreme being or force or power in the universe.

What characterizes the First Century

Church?•These women and men were

known as and called themselves “People of The Way.”

•What is “The Way”?

You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know--this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death because it was impossible for him to be held in death’s power. Acts 2:22-24

The Way = Living, Dying,Rising.

Living

•Living means the things we do that are needed to sustain life, to keep going. These things may not be glamorous but there is life in them, and they give life.

•Southernism: Keeping on, keeping on.

Dying

•The dying things are those where is no life or life is fading. In the first century church, they were called to die to the old ways of living.

•There is grief in dying as well as sadness and memory.

Rising

•Rising means those things which are new and fresh. These are the things that are emerging.

•What is rising may be something that is resurrected or it may be something completely new.

How is your ministry context

living, dying, rising?