Trendiness is Next to Godliness

Two quotes from the website of Solomon's Porch, a holistic, missional and emergent Christian community:

(1) "You will not find statements of what our community believes on this site. Belief is a dynamic lived reality and doesn't lend itself to website statements."

Wow. Even those horrid old liberals are quite happy to tell you (often in fair detail) what they believe on their websites...

(2) "God's Spirit takes precedence over all structures and systems".

Wow. So daring, so trendy, so avant garde. So ineffably postmodern. So radically non-committal, so courageously vacuous. So tediously predictable.

The pertinent question that raises its impertinent head is: "How do we know when the actual Spirit of God is actually guiding us and when we are just imagining that he is?"

One of the main figures at Solomon's Porch is Doug Pagitt (see picture above).

Doug says about his latest book Church in the Inventive Age (2010):

"This is my latest book - it is a fast-paced, big-idea, thought-provoking invitation for churches to be full participants in a cultural age where creativity, participation and inclusion are the norm. This book is designed as a conversation starter for professional and lay church leaders who know that something important is happening in our culture that creates fresh, exciting opportunities for Christianity in our world."

Where DOES one learn to write like this? Is it a gift, or can I learn to do it too? It sounds like a politician - smooth, apparently meaningful words which somehow manage to say almost nothing.

I shouldn't be such a grouch. I am a bad person.

In his Church Re-Imagined (2005), Doug says:

"To move beyond the passive approach to faith, we've tried to create a community that's more like a potluck: people eat and they also bring something for others. Our belief is built when all of us engage our hopes, dreams, ideas and understandings with the story of God as it unfolds through history and through us."

Given Doug's unconventional view of the Bible (which he admits to happily and freely), where exactly is this "story of God" recorded and what is its content? We do need to know this, because stories of God are (sadly) two a penny in this fast-moving and increasingly confusing world.