Author and Presbyterian pastor Carol Howard Merritt is writing a series of posts about the work she is doing as part of a task force formed to explore generational and cultural changes in the PC(USA). She is inviting us to share in the process via discussion of her posts. Here’s an important statement from her initial entry:

It’s clear that God is doing a new thing in our midst, and in this important time of discernment, we can become open to what and who God is calling us to become. In the PC(USA), the average age of our membership is over 60 and the median Sunday morning attendance is about 70. Clearly, a lot of things will be changing in the next 20 years. My hope is that many churches will continue to exist in health. Just because a church is small, does not mean that it’s dying or that it’s ill. Often it simply means that it’s small.

The problem comes if that church is not able to reach out to a new generation or to its neighbors. If that happens, then churches will come to the end of their life spans. Their assets will become available and we will use them to plant new congregations that are able to tell the good news in our particular time and place. From time to time, I hear, “We’re closing churches! Why would we start new ones? We can’t keep the ones we have going!”

via Carol Howard Merritt, TribalChurch.org.

I’ve just read a post from Presbyterian pastor Tim Blodgett on his blog “In the World.” It’s an excellent assessment of what many of us of a postmodern mindset feel is the most critical difference between leader/follower conferences and open space social conferences – AND a critical shift in the process of being Church, as highlighted in this quote from the post:

The larger shift on the horizon for the church beyond 10-A and nFOG, is the twin flattening out of power for some and empowering of others in the church as a result of the democratizing, open source, social forces active in the world today and in the church. This shift has already started happening in places. To put it another way, this shift represents a return to something closer to the priesthood of all believers rather than the more hierarchical structures that exist at present.

via in the world – Unco: The Social Conference – Unco: The Social Conference.

Here’s audio from this morning’s sermon at Fairfax Christian Church:

twt.fm / @scottie_t “#unco11″.

I love this notion:

Evangelism is action on God’s part, through the Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, to solve the problem of God’s “unrequited love” with creation.

Landon Whitsitt, The Metanoia Project