erwin mcmanus spoke yesterday at the afternoon session. here are some highlights:
“i was a big star trek fan as a kid. but I’m a lot older than most of you, so i don’t mean the next generation…I mean captain kirk…before he went to boston…illegally.” [joke context alert: william shatner is now on a show called boston legal.]
“star trek was about finding people across galaxies who are a lot closer to us than they seem. ’space’ is deceiving in that way.”
“there are three spaces that we in the church need to be aware of. ‘1st space’ is the place we build or establish where we are the majority. (i.e. church building)”
paul is in athens and is distressed that people are not connecting with god. so he goes first to the synagogue to be with the jews and god-fearing greeks. (1st space)”
“then he goes out into the marketplace where everyone lives and works and plays. ‘2nd space’ is common to believers and non-believers. it’s where people judge you by what you do, the fruits of your labor, how you interact with other people, [etc.]”
“i hear christians all the time talk about how vicious and closed-minded non-believers are. i find it’s usually the christians who are closed-minded and vicious. the market, 2nd space, is open to having god conversations. they want to know more.”
“i’m very introverted. but it’s not that i don’t like people. i love human beings as an idea.”
“when somebody asks me what i do, i tell them one of the other things i do: i write books, i develop people…i don’t say i’m a pastor, cause to lots of people that’s like saying, ‘hi i’m a cannibal and i haven’t had lunch yet. would you like to join me?’”
“‘then they [some greek philosophers] took him and brought him to a meeting of the areopagus where they said to him…you are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.’ paul earned the right what he did in ‘2nd space’ to be invited into ‘3rd space,’ the place where we are the outsiders. you can only go there if you are invited.”
“believe that the fingerprints of god are everywhere, on everyone, and be committed to learning how to be an archaeologist and remove the dust and find them.”
“leave the 1st space, live in the 2nd space, in such a way that we get invited to enter the 3rd space and begin to have god conversations with them.”
“if you are really ministering to people in the 3rd space, people from your 1st space won’t understand. that’s okay.”
-on questions about the direction “the church of america” is headed:
“i want to be more like a new testament church…really? which one? galatia? corinth? rome? they were all messed up. confused or quarrelsome or whatever. the church has been messed up since it started, because we have been there the whole time.”
“there will be lots of buildings to remind us of the past. and there will be a lot of humanitarian movements that will take us into the future. we are in a time where the church has the potential of being the force behind the greatest wave of humanitarian efforts in the history of the world. it’s very exciting.”
Posted on November 15th, 2008 by deWeb
Filed under: Uncategorized
