Please remember that we are not meeting this tonight (8/8) or next Tuesday (8/15). On August 22 we will begin our reading of Pastor Tim Sorens’s book, Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church Right Where You Are. This book was recommended to me by Ann Fleming who conducted Messiah’s parish visioning retreat a few weeks ago. The book is not a follow-up to the retreat, however, the book is intended to have all us focus on a new vision for what the church can be in our community.
Tim Sorens is a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church. The focus of his book is to explore the question of “What is the Church for?” or “What is the Church’s primary function in our community?” His concern in this book is not what the church believes or how we worship on Sunday morning but having us think through how the local parish church can take practical and actionable steps to be the light and leaven where we live and work, and not simply an end unto itself. In other words, how can we make the church – a Christ-centered community – into a daily activity not only for our members but for our neighborhoods?
I hope you can join us when we start back on Tuesday, August 22. I have attached Walter Brueggemann’s Forward to the book as well as the first two chapters to give you a better understanding of the discussions that we will be having. Brueggemann gives a great summary of Sorens’s vision for the local church.
Sorens has written a book that teems with hope and possibility for the future, a hope that the church need not reiterate our mistaken past, and a possibility that real people in real time and real circumstances can live out the why of God.
Walter Bruggermann, p.3-4 (emphasis in original)