: the canadian cultural continuum :

... Rod Wilson, President of Regent College since 2000, was my counselling prof back in the day at OTS/Tyndale Seminary. FaithToday asked Rod, and a number of other Canadian ministry leaders, what they would desire to see for Canadian Christianity. Rod's answer, like Tim's "fruit facsimiles' post, got me thinking ...

"it seems to me that the Canadian Church is making mistakes on both sides of the cultural continuum. On the questionable side of the continuum there is an accommodation to success-oriented approaches to ministry ... where the number of services, size of staff, square footage of buildings, and measurable goals have become the new standard for accomplishment.

On the other side, legitimate cultural issues like the arts, entertainment, media, technology and the environment are not seen as inherently spiritual, so are not brought under the canopy of God's Kingdom values. I would love to see the Canadian Church leave the former side and cleave to the latter one".

Sheesh ... does that sum it up, or what? where did we get off the rails? how can we get back to a Kingdom mindset, for the 21st century? can the success-orientation even be redeemed? these are the things that haunt me when I am not trying to run a church of 800 people, as if I could! And then ... where are our priorities when it comes to justice, poverty, consumption? Something is seriously out-of-whack here.

dlc