Creation and Mission
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. --Gen 1:1 When I think back to the church of my childhood, it is very clear to me what the central mission was of our life as a church. We aimed to get people to attend church services and get them to walk the aisle. After all the measure of good church depended upon whether people responded to the alter call. That was my Southern Baptist experience, but the same measure is applied to many other traditions with slightly different twists. The mission of the church is usually attached to getting people to attend a worship service and respond in some way to that service. My imagination about church, God's life and the Gospel was shaped as a kid by this view of mission. Three times per week I sat and listened to services that pointed to a climactic end when we hoped that what we did would prove legit because someone would respond. In my more sarcastic days I might say something like: did we assume that God created the world ...