The items in Authentic Church are lifted entirely from the Booklet, and my comments will be set apart with a different format, like this , for instance

At the heart of each of us is a driving hunger for ways to five and be in relationship that are genuine. So it is with churches as well. As unique and different as churches are, the ones that are authentic hope to bear a striking and clear resemblance to Jesus, to be so much like Jesus that people sense they have encountered him when they encounter the church.

How to facilitate such an encounter how to become so much like Jesus that our very way of life comforts the world’s brokenhearted and confronts the world’s broken systems is a key question for all who seek authentic, faithful belonging.

If ever there were a time for the church universal to become more truly the body of Christ, to find ways to embody the life and ministry of Christ for the sake of the world, it would be now as violence and despair grow. We desperately need an authentic encounter with Jesus, an encounter that will shake us at our foundations and compel us to become the loving, reconciling people we have been created to be.

The processes that we try to describe here offer one possibility for how we who care about the church might follow our primary calling to love each other as we have been loved and to create spaces in which that healing love can be expressed and extended. It is an attempt to make Jesus real for all of us.

The church’s structures change, but its message and mission do not. Through those who will risk leaving the familiar in order to pitch our tents in the unknown, God still schemes and dreams the new.

— Kayla McClurg