The Quest for Holiness of Heart and Life

Last night I joined with fifteen other "baby-boomer generation" folks in a great new adventure: beginning a house church. For my wife and I this is our second foray into this first century paradigm of church. Home churches, house churches, cell churches, whatever you prefer to call them, have long been an interest of mine. In fact, it was the subject of my doctoral dissertation, some twenty years ago. The model is experiencing a resurgence among many, especially those engaging in the emergent church conversation. The gathering last night has made me think more about "The Quest for Holiness of Heart and Life" and to revisit a work I authored a few years ago and which really is at the heart of the theology of this blog. It revolves around a spiritual path I created for small, house/home/cell churches - what I call in this work Intentional Covenant Fellowships. I have decided to publish this path here for anyone who wishes to share in it. It revolves around "Ten Transformations". I will publish one of the transformations each month. I invite you to read the following introduction, and the first of the transformations, Prayer-Making. Please feel free to comment.

the_quest_for_holiness.doc

Welcome to the seventh year of the current millenium (go ahead, count them)! It has been awhile since I posted on my blog...I appologize to my regular readers.

This first offering of the new year was not written by me, but by the pastor of an emergent church in San Diego, California, Ken Hensley and is reprinted here with his permission. I came across it recently and was intrigued by what it had to say about the "feeling tone" of church. It points out for me the disparity between the intimacy that we seek in Christian community and the difficulty in finding it in the mainstream churches. Please comment on this article, I think we can get a good conversation going.

coffee_shop_christianity.htm