Here is a post from inward/outward , adapted from the intro of the booklet Becoming the Authentic Church, that is a post as good as any to look forward to 2008:
The structures—the containers—change, but the message and mission of Jesus do not. Finding creative, life-giving ways to love God and each other as we have been loved—creating spaces in which that healing love can be expressed and extended—is the primary task set before us now. We must find ways to make Jesus real for all of us.
What I imagine is a revitalized and committed people who take Jesus seriously, joining a movement that is already underway, a movement toward recovery from the culture’s addictive pull, a healing movement that lifts up all who touch our life together.
In this movement, those of us who have borne an unfair proportion of the world’s pain unite in compassionate community with those of us who have ignored and even perpetrated some of that pain, and we rediscover our oneness, becoming who we truly are as God’s beloved family.
