Sunday, December 28th, 2008
I read through George Barna‘s Revolution the other day, and it’s gotten me thinking. Barna basically discusses the Church in its traditional form and compares it to what he believes will be taking place in the next few years and decades. Barna finds in his research of culture and the Church a trend that is taking place. He realizes that many followers of God are leaving traditional church structure for alternative methods of worship and service. Barna discusses what he terms “Revolutionaries,” people who passionately follow God regardless of their beliefs on church structure. Throughout the book, he expounds on these Revolutionaries and explains why he believes that Christians must follow this path.
Most interesting to me in this book is Barna’s opinion on the future of the Church. He believes that in the coming decades the Church will see a definite shift from the traditional local church model to a more varied design in which many groups do many different things. Barna sees this in a positive light:
“To some, this will sound like the Great Fall of the Church. To Revolutionaries, it will be the Great Reawakening of the Church…[new scenarios] represent a new day in which the Church can truly be the Church–different from what we know today, but more responsible to and reflective of God.” (page 108)
I find this interesting, and I appreciate Barna’s further clarification of this new model of the Church. I can see how a critic might argue against this, stating that many churches are growing at a rapid pace, but at the same time disillusionment with the local church seems prevalent and parachurch organizations are too growing in popularity. I’m certainly curious to see where this goes in the upcoming years. I’d love to hear other thoughts on this in the comments.
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
So I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, and that’s why I haven’t posted much. One of these things that’s kept me busy is a Christmas gift that I had hoped to make for a friend. I intended to create a secret hollow book using a few older books, and I had hoped that this project would take about an hour. The instructions that I read seemed simple enough (and after all, how difficult could it be to cut a hole into paper?). Well, I was wrong. As you can see here (picture taken on my phone), this now-3-man project made use of several tools. We began with a simple X-acto knife, but quickly moved onto a drill, a reciprocating saw, and finally a circular saw. The cover of the book was cut (as you would imagine!) very quickly and easily, but we found that the pages were lined with steel. Eventually it worked out, but who would have thought paper would be so difficult to cut through? Do you have any similar experiences? Anyone ever done this project before, perhaps more efficiently?