Affirmation

Publishing is scary.  It might be on a blog, a status update, or sending a manuscript off for publishing; when you publish something it leaves your hands and you lose control.  You forfeit your ability to have the last word or explain yourself.  However every now and then you publish something and it seems to resonate with someone.

Sometime next month an article I wrote is going to appear in the Christian Standard.  After I submitted my thesis my advisers encouraged me to turn it into an article and the Standard decided to run with it.  As great as it is to get my small article published in a niche publication mainly circulated to churches, it has been nice to see ideas I was working through coming through in other arenas.

Essentially my thesis was exploring ways in which existing more traditional churches can embrace newer models of ecclesiology without losing historical identity.  Or in other words how can that church down the street adapt to changes in order to still connect with people without blowing the whole thing up.

It started about halfway through my thesis that a Tim Conder and Jim Belcher had already written books that were pretty close to what I was writing and infinitely better.  Lately I have seen even more signs that I wasn’t completely off base.  I attended the AND Conference that spent two days exploring how the Attractional and Missional models of church can exist.  The conference seemed to take inspiration from a Hugh Halter book, and just the other day I saw an advertisement for another book by Dave Browning looking to embrace a both/and mentality for church.

Hey if I can spend several thousand dollars and spend 6 months or so working on a project and know I’m not crazy I think it is worth it, at least that’s what I am going to tell myself.