Formative Classes: Exploring Faithful Church

I entered seminary with many uncertainties. In earlier posts I commented on my doubts about the vitality and sustainability of church as we currently practice it. I was eager to explore radically fresh concepts of what church life together could look like. Because of these questions, Experimental Congregations quickly became my most exciting class during the first semester as we dug into some visionary—and even provocative—ideas for being church. While not the only factor renewing my confidence in God’s faithful community, that class with Gerald Shenk and a small group of impassioned classmates freed me to dig into a whole range of issues regarding the essence of the church.

Where Experimental Congregations gave me revitalizing glimpses into the possibilities for being the current and future church, I am expecting this semester’s Believers Church to be packed with equally fertile visioning about the Body of Christ today and tomorrow. Last semester my classmates and I sought out inspiration from current expressions of faithful Jesus-following communities. This semester, I anticipate Nate Yoder’s Believers Church will provide a solid look back to historical expressions of Anabaptist and other Believers Church traditions in order to shape our faithful living-out of church on the path ahead.

We are already asking invigorating questions about church leadership, expectations for inclusion and participation in the Body, relationship to the civil powers and to the broader culture, the role of the Holy Spirit in community life, and more. May God guide us as we envision and live out historically grounded, contemporarily informed, Spirit-led expressions of God’s reign!

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