Jon Ritner is the author of Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church. In this episode, we discuss what it means to be the church in a post-Christendom world. How can the church be the kind of church that a Post-Christendom world actually needs—and the kind of church that God is calling the church to be?
THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
- Jon Ritner is the author of Positively Irritating: Embracing a Post-Christian World to Form a More Faithful and Innovative Church and has served as lead at Ecclesia Hollywood for the last seven.
- After serving as an executive pastor of a megachurch, Jon Ritner eventually made his way to a microchurch network in Brussels, Belgium.
- Later, Jon Ritner and his wife moved to Hollywood to help churches adapt and innovate in an increasingly post-Christendom world.
- The early church existed in a pluralistic pre-Christian culture.
- Jon Ritner uses the metaphor of an oyster to help us understand that challenges, when approached with a posture of learning and embrace, can lead to beauty.
- Thanks to Covid, we have just spent the last two years in a liminal space.
- The mission of God is not just the conversion of every individual soul. It’s the redemption and restoration of all of creation.
- Jon Ritner argues that ministry should happen throughout the week in all the places where God’s people are. Then they can come together to celebrate on Sundays.
- For many people today, going to church is almost a cross-cultural experience.
- Jon Ritner explains that many churches unconsciously create an insider-outsider divide when they announce that if someone wants to find belonging they have to come to the church.
RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:
Learn how to lead your church into ministry that matters. Check out my online course, Engaging God's Mission.