{"id":285,"date":"2016-06-23T18:28:55","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T18:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=285"},"modified":"2018-09-19T18:30:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T18:30:46","slug":"hope-and-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/from-the-publisher\/hope-and-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope and imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sign caught my eye.<\/strong>\u00a0After the church name was the slogan \u201cwhere it\u2019s never church as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found myself feeling defensive. The message was meant to be positive, but it seemed to be wrapped around a negative: We\u2019re not boring like all those other churches. Or even: We\u2019re more entertaining than\u00a0your<\/em>\u00a0church.<\/p>\n

Of course if \u201cchurch as usual\u201d means stuck and stagnant, the leaders of that church are right to avoid it. But they might simply be saying that they\u2019re not traditional\u2014that they don\u2019t have pews or hymnals, the preacher wears jeans, or the coffee is exceptionally good.<\/p>\n

Maybe I felt defensive because I like a few traditions. I can still remember the thrill of a sanctuary filled with\u00a0Sine Nomine<\/em>\u00a0on a thundering pipe organ. Traditional organ music was church as usual for the large congregation of my childhood.<\/p>\n

Maybe I felt defensive for all the tiny congregations for whom church as usual is their dearest desire, as they struggle to maintain regular services with dwindling numbers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, though, that the church should not be about either nostalgia or maintenance. What does it mean to live into the future with hope and imagination?<\/p>\n

There are many ways to answer that question, and those gathered for the recent church planting conference engaged it seriously. (You can read a news report at www.brethren.org\/news.) Among participants were a number of people leading innovative church plants that are featured in this issue of Messenger. I guess you could say these congregations are not church as usual, but that\u2019s not the language they use. Their identities seem more about who they are and less about who they are not.<\/p>\n

These fledgling communities are living in hope and imagination. Hope isn\u2019t wishful thinking, and imagination isn\u2019t just creativity. Hope is seeing beyond the cultural trappings of all our churches\u2014traditional or contemporary, large or small\u2014and recognizing the body of Christ. Imagination is living into new possibilities as if they were already real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Where it’s never church as usual.” What?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,38],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-publisher","tag-from-the-publisher","tag-wendy-mcfadden"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}