I spent a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon reading the first few chapters of a book by Brian Sanders titled Life After Church: God's Call to Disillusioned Christians. While not agreeing with all that Brian had to say in the chapters I read, I was significantly challenged by a great deal of what he shared. I'd encourage you to get a copy of the book... as I'd like to get your take on it.Here's an excerpt from the introduction, in which Brian describes a portion of his personal spiritual odyssey:
I still needed to "find a church." So I did. And I liked it. But the more seriously I took the Bible, the more I saw in Scripture a very certain call to proclaim a gospel of transformation, a revolutionary gospel, the more I saw what I was doing on Sunday mornings as, well, unrevolutionary.
We simply were not impacting anyone by sequestering ourselves in a building and preaching to each other truths we all already believed. There were parts I still liked: seeing my friends, the music, listening to the Word. But I began to wonder about the nature of church, and I began to see church as extraneous to ministry.
