I feel lost examining foot prints in the desert of church philosophy

I am just finishing two days of haphazardly planning for next year with An. We were thinking out loud with each others, confessing our fears and our weaknesses and dreaming about being faithful with what God entrusted us with.

The two persons who read this blog regularly will probably pick up that most of the time I am dazed and confused by the many voices I learned from. Often I hold opposite views in my mind at the same time while weighting their worth by Scripture – and the views themselves always came standard with Scripture support – which made my job of discerning harder than ever.

But what often got left out from most views presented are the contexts.

In the economy of God, if the messenger is as important as the message, then why are we discounting the context of the views?

I have heard of the “emerging church” for a while, but lately I have been studying the “purpose-driven-church” view from Tony Morgan and his peers as well. Both views are equally convinced.

The critical question is what’s our context? Will the Vietnamese American context fit with the EC or the PDC view?

A local American pastor has been training many Vietnamese church leaders around here on PDC for the last 6 months. The last two Vietnamese World Christian Fellowship leadership conferences was focus on PDC too.

But no Vietnamese church (in any known denomination) has reported any progress made with the PDC philosophy yet. Could the following quote from an EC blog point out the contextual problem:

Virtually all of those who are attracted to the relevant service were raised in church or are currently going to another church -- they are not the never-churched

In short: Vietnamese people are not quite evangelized yet as a whole.

But by the same token, the EC direction will offer nothing for us too. “Postmodern” church has a premise that you can return to the “ancient future” of the church. But Vietnamese is not even modernistic (theologically) in their thinking yet, so there would be nothing for us to return to.

Except for Scripture.

And on that basis, church is messy, church is dysfunctional, church is to figuring where’s the Spirit is moving and move with Him. Church is a family for you after your family disowns you. Church is your friends and peers. Church is where you are loved. Church is where you invest your future. Church is your sweat and blood. Church is where the Power was seen. Church is where the Living Word was heard.

We are the representatives of God, we are the aliens in the strange land, we are each other’s family, we will keep moving from views to views, EC is fine, PDC is fine. Wherever the Presence setting down we will encamp, and whenever the fiery clouds take off we will go.

We have no idea of where we are going as a church. We don’t have a road map, but we can read foot prints from other, and we have a compass...