“Good deeds pave the road over which the Good News travels,” is the theme of Chapter 6. The authors point out on page 116 that Christianity today is often reduced to a set of tenents or a philosophy that “we believe and can defend but don’t necessarily practice.” Convicting words. The chart on page 125 profiles four quandrants that most churches fall into in terms of evangelism and service. Where do you think DCC falls? Where would you plug your own goals, beliefs, foci, and actions?
Chapter 7 boils it all down for us. “If [DCC] picked up and left, how would the city feel? Would anybody even notice? Would anybody care?”
Question: What can we do to get started? What can YOU do?
August 15, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I see this whole externally focused church “movement” as a partnership between our church and our members. The church alone can not drive this, and it’s probably not a wise use of resources to have each member organizing and implementing their own ministries in the community.
I think a good place to start is by uncovering the needs of our community and the desires and giftedness of our congregation and then finding a way to match the two. I would love to hear some ideas on how we can make that happen.
I am excited about what is going on at Deer Creek right now. There are a lot of new faces every Sunday, and although there are only a few of us commenting on this blog, I have been hearing from a lot of people that they are reading the book, and beginning to reach out to others in their neighborhoods. Praise God!
We are going to have a potluck discussion on Sunday 9/9 at 12:30 to flesh out more ideas on being an “EFC”. Save the date!