gospel, church, & culture with mark devine and darrin patrick

June 20, 2007

I’m really looking forward to this tomorrow. If you are in the area and you have a passion to reach the emerging culture, you won’t want to miss Dr. Mark Devine of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Pastor Darrin Patrick of The Journey talk about the intersection of Gospel, church, and culture at the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association building in Bridgeton off of Fee Fee from 10-2.

They will be talking about missiology, contextualization and the emerging church, among other things. And I’m sure there could be a palatable tension in the air with the controversy surrounding The Journey. My prayer is that there is a spirit of humility and receptivity to the topic at hand.

This conversation needs to happen. Any controversy needs to be quelled. Especially for the sake of mission and reaching the emerging culture in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Missouri and beyond. And I can’t think of any two persons better to champion the cause of ‘contending and contextualizing’ than Devine and Patrick.

I will try to post within the week a breakdown of the talk for those of you who weren’t able to attend.

This is the official press release from the SLMBA:

GOSPEL, CHURCH, and CULTURE

Thursday, June 21st from 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m., pastors, church and mission leaders from across the area will gather at our offices for a day with Dr. Mark Devine of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Pastor Darrin Patrick of The Journey.

This day will center upon how to take the never changing gospel to an ever changing culture. What is cultural contextualization and what challenges and opportunities does this present to your church? What is the emerging church and who gets to define it?

This will be a great day of hanging out with fellow leaders, meeting new friends, and asking some relevant and yes, tough questions for the day in which we do kingdom work.

Here is Devine’s recent paper on some of the controversy swirling here in Missouri: Acts 29 and the Missouri Baptist Convention.

Posted in Gospel, church, culture, emerging church, emerging culture, leadership, missiology, theology