I could probably stay in Peterson's introduction to The Jesus Way for a lot longer, but if I do, I'll never make it through the book.
One area that he addresses in his intro, though, is very applicable to where I am living right now as a campus pastor at Bridge Bible Church - and that is the very nature of the church.
A couple of quotes:
"A Christian congregation, the church in your neighborhood, has always been the primary location for getting this way and truth and life of Jesus believed and embodied in the places and among the people with whom we most have to do day in and day out."
"... the local congregation is the place where we get all of this integrated and practiced in the immediate circumstances and among the men, women and children we live with. This is where it becomes local and personal."
"As created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, it [the local church] is insistently local and personal. Unfortunately, the more popular American church strategies in respect to congregation are not friendly to the local and the personal."
Is Peterson right in stressing the "local and personal" center of what a church ought to be? If so, then the fact that most of us only see people from the church on Sunday mornings (or maybe one other time at a formal small group or Bible study) would say that we are sadly missing the center.
I realize a lot of this is as much a function of our culture (lack of relationships with neighbors, no more real "front porches", how we busily fill up all of our available time) as it is a function of the nature of how we go about church, but a large part of it is a function of how we go about church. And anyway, the church is called to be counter-culture, not to mimic culture.
What would that kind of "local and personal" community look like in a church today? Is the fact that we have built so many large churches that have people drive in from miles and miles away contributed to a lack of emphasis on incarnation and community?
A lot to think about ... now on to the first chapter.