Maybe better to say, “You heard it here first.”
Scot McKnight links to this tale of a church ‘merger’ between an older established congregation (60% congregants over age 50, 30%+ over age 70) and an emerging church congregation (complete with nonprofit cafe). Obviously there isn’t much in this account to go by, but in my mind looks like a beautiful story of cooperation, of working together, of older generations blessing and enabling younger ones, and of younger generations honouring and valuing the wisdom of older ones.
Would that we would see more of this, and that it would become commonplace. I wrote about this sort of thing in my Annual Prognostications last month, predicting that increased cooperation between older and emerging churches would become fairly common in late 2008 and early 2009. As I clarified in the comments to that post, the timeline I was talking about represents when I think this sort of thing will become more commonplace, less remarkable. For now though, they stand out, and deserve notice and mention. As was pointed out in the other comment thread, this kind of thing is already happening… but the example here of a merger of two very different conversations is something far beyond simply sharing a building or some other resource, and I hope it represents a kind of “firstfruits” of what’s to come.
We need more of this.
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