A nice, low-key evening at the pub last night.  In the cask was the Aztec Gold, a porter with chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, and chipotle…  a spicy delicious combination.

We had some good conversations on the topics below:

1.    If the church is to have a future it must:
___________________________________.

2.    Without proper structures life will never grow.  Faith, naturally intuitive, cannot grow without a proper use of logic (structure).  Where there are lapses of faith, there are broken structures of logic.  Faith stretches our logic, and logic should create a space to experience our faith.

3.    “I relax and enjoy life.  I know that whatever I need to know is revealed to me in the perfect time and space sequence.”

4.    This offends me: _________________________.

5.  Humanism or atheism is a wonderful philosophy of life as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. But watch out if you are in a lifeboat and there are others who are younger, bigger, or smarter.

The first topic was in light of Andrew Sullivan’s recent article in Newsweek about the crisis in Christianity.

What do you think?  Is the church in trouble?  What must it do going forward?

I have to say that I highly enjoyed a couple of response pieces:

Diana Butler Bass:  A Resurrected Christianity?

and

Scott Paeth:  The Power of the Powerless

Thanks to Tony Jones for pointing out those responses.  He has more on his blog:  Theoblogy:  What Crisis in Christianity?!?