Get back to basics

This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”

From Christian Week:

"To use Jesus' metaphor of the wine and wineskins, people still have a taste for the wine. But we have problems with our containers," said Glenn Gibson, director of church revitalization ministries for Outreach Canada, which hosted the three-day gathering at First Baptist Church. "We've got to discover new wineskins. Some churches are going to need to undergo a radical change-if that's possible." Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, echoed that theme. In a keynote address, he said the church needs to rediscover the simple "reproducible" model of the first and second centuries. "We need to travel light," he said. "Movements move. We've got to learn to move today." Gibbs says God is already "doing a new thing" not only within existing church traditions, but outside them as well through the "emerging church." Evidence of this phenomenon, he says, is to be found in his native England, where the movement "is increasingly mainstream, because the structures are beginning to crumble."… "The mega-churches are like Wal-Mart. They are doing very, very well. The emerging churches are like Mary Kay or Tupperware-doing well in homes. The mainline churches are like the mom and pop stores. They are in the middle and they are collapsing."