I remain hopeful about the idea that someday,  via all my “reaching out” to ideas of “authentic church” that have inspired me over the years via The Church of the Saviour,  that some local connection might emerge wherein I and others might venture out and “start from a clean slate” so to speak  (the “blank piece of paper” from the previous post’s quote) toward hammering out of intentional community, worship, mission, call,  and discipleship.  I have questions about whether or not existing structures can allow such ideas to thrive and grow and be a context for discernment.  Do not existing structures already carry with them the burden of a “life of their own”?  Are not expectations of what it means to be a “church member” likely to frown upon something that is , in reality,  “hard”? 

While I continue to be extremely conscious of “openings” in my social life to enter into a dialogue with others about the nature of The Church,  I also have hoped,  since about a year ago when I visited D.C. and picked up the “Becoming the Authentic Church” booklet at the Potter’s House,  that I would ,  via posting the sections of The Authentic Church as blog posts,  and posting ABOUT these things,  that a fellow blogger or bloggers would engage me on these things. 

It seems that the blogosphere is becoming less of a dialogue than it has been in the past,  but maybe that’s just the nature of the subject matter of trying to talk about the church.  It seems to make for a more popular blog to be a particular style of partisan re: politics.  Something in me has awakened some of the “gotta blog it” disgust with the American political scene and the Bush administration,  and gotten me back into reading some of that (like David Kuo’s book about the inner workings of the Bush administration’s “Faith-based initiative”, Tempting Faith…I’m almost finished with it.  Good story. Lots of issues there. But weak on relating all these problems to the “real politic” represented by the church as intended). But I have also been reading through David Fitch’s The Great Giveaway, which has kept before me the kinds of dilemmas I am facing concerning the church,  and how “culturally affirming” and “cultural formation affirming” the church has been,  “Giving Away” many of the formative roles that were intended to be addressed by the reality of a people called by God to be in community,  and to see that community represent an undeniable contrast,  a “city set on a hill” that IS, by its very nature,  a POLITIC that lays waste to the idea that the politics we now know are a politic at all.