Miss Havisham and a Church Stuck in the Past | [D]mergent

Christianity
Written By Derek Penwell

Human beings are amazingly partial to the idea of freezing moments (both the good and the bad) as a hedge against change. Humans tend to find comfort in a past they’ve survived, rather than a future about which they don’t yet know.

Seth Godin drives home the point, suggesting that “for many of us, the happiest future is the one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better” (Linchpin, 203).

Whither the church? I want to suggest that congregations in decline share at least one factor in common: they are especially prone to setting the past in amber.

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Miss Havisham and a Church Stuck in the Past | [D]mergent.

Derek Penwell

Author, Speaker, Pastor, Activist. Derek Penwell is senior pastor of Douglass Boulevard Christian Church, and a lecturer at the University of Louisville in Religious Studies and Comparative Humanities. His newest book, Outlandish, focuses on understanding the political nature of Jesus’ life as a model for forming communities of resistance capable of challenging oppression in the pursuit of peace and justice.

He is an activist and advocate on local, state, and national levels on issues of racial justice, LGBTQ fairness, interfaith engagement, and immigrant and refugee rights.

https://derekpenwell.net
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