Thanks David for sending through that open letter by Jordon Cooper. The snippet below , I thought said alot.

"While we still love the church, we see the church having failed it's own basic mission. I wish I could hear a big Amen at this point but the reality is that not everyone sees it that way. I have colleagues in ministry that point to the Sunday attendance of their churches and their building programs and tell me that everything is going great and they criticize those of us that go in a different direction. All denominations deny this but the sweet allure of success is just too powerful, successful and big churches drive the agenda's of many denominations, either formally or informally. Success is largest impediment of change, which is why most downtown cores of cities across the United States and Canada are full of massive church buildings that were the megachurches of their day. What made them successful made it very hard to change from that. Change and new initiatives don't traditionally thrive in most institutions and need to be nurtured and protected at times."

This has been my experiance also. Many Christians are disatisfied with the status quo and want to make radical changes to their lives. I also think this is true for a fair number of clergy. The problem as Cooper says is that those leading denominations are usually from big booming churches. They have been picked because they are 'succesful' and appear to have the answers. Their answers are 2 do what they are doing which perpetuates the cycle of more of the same. These leaders dont reflect where the people are actually at, they actually reflect the assumption of where the denomination should be going (which is mega churches). I believe this assumption is very flawed.

Just practically in the denomination that I was involved with, this assumption has been with us since the mid 1980's. After 20 years and the denomination becoming smaller, you would think that these assumptions would be challanged but they are not because even if 90% of churches are grappling with reality and seeking to make change, you will always going to have 10% whos church is (at that momment) appearing to be great. And of cause its those 10% of churches that are providing the denominational leadership.

Well that sounds very garbled!