Our future is at stake

Institutions don’t excite me. Movements do.

As someone who has given most of his life to the church, my passion for trying to preserve the American version of the institution we call “the church” is almost nonexistent. 

I just don’t think Jesus’ vision for the church was to create an institution defined by rituals, rigid theology, or membership requirements. Jesus wasn’t trying to set up a “better” power structure, a more righteous hierarchy, or the ideal religious system. 

I truly believe Jesus was inaugurating a movement (he referred to it most often as the in-breaking “kingdom of God”)

—a movement marked by 

radical love, 

faithful presence, 

ever-expanding inclusivity, 

proactive grace, 

restorative justice… 

nothing short of the “renewal of all things.”

Jesus’ vision for the church is to be a catalyst of this movement, and there are certainly plenty of times when the church has been just that (along with plenty of times when the church also stifled the movement). We are at a crossroads today as the church wrestles with its sense of identity. The pull to preserve the institution of the church *as we have known it* is strong, but we have seen how that leads to dying congregations, empty buildings, and a hollow witness. 

HOWEVER, when the church is willing to hold loosely to history and traditions,
lean into the challenges with courage and the ambiguity with purpose,
clinging to Jesus and giving its broken best to embody the values of his movement??

Friends, that is where hope for the future will be found.

And that is the heartbeat behind the R3 Spaces Summit.

What would a movement look like that isn’t constricted by institutional norms or confined strictly to the realm of the church, but rather ever-broadening in its desire to see our communities flourish and experience the all-encompassing renewal we desire?

We don’t have the answers to that question, but we’re hoping to gather a group of folks together interested in trying to answer it together. We hope you’ll join us (and please spread the word!), because it’s going to take all of us.

In this together,