Trust and Truth

I spent the morning at Dan Kimball’s discussion “fundamental truths in one emerging church.” I like his church, and his approach, but it’s sometimes hard to spend 90% of a session framed in an argument our church is not a part of – the Evangelicals vs. the Emergent Church (cue the dramatic music, please). Coming out of the liberal mainline, we just have different struggles, and different arguments. That being said, I got my nugget in spades (I attend these sessions believing that there is one nugget in each one that I can ponder and use). He said, in slightly different words (sorry, Dan, for paraphrasing!), that the core issue of Truth is now Trust. That we have moved from a propositional, deductive way of learning about truth to a relational one. To take that idea further, our job, as church leadership, is to be trustworthy – to build relationships of trust with God and then with people, so that other people can trust what we trust (God). Genuine, open, loving, struggling, joyful, transparent, trustworthy faith shining forth from genuine, open, loving, struggling, joyful, transparent, trustworthy people is what the world is hungry for.

 

The afternoon was Eugene Peterson. Great pastor, great scholar, great man, great modern. I’d love to share my nugget with you about his discussion of the role of the pastor in the modern church and compare it to my thoughts on the role of the pastor in the post-modern church, but it needs diagrams. My kingdom (mine, not His) for Zoho.

 

Pastor Bran