Here it is, a new year and I’m ready to do some serious blogging. This year has been one of a few changes for me. My life has changed in that my wife and I have a new journey to travel together. Also, we are now attending a new gathering of Christ-followers, New Eden Fellowship where we are seeking to find new ways to reach out into the community around us and be ministers where we are, as we are. And my blog has migrated to the WordPress platform to allow me to have a bit more fun with geeky stuff that goes along with this whole blogging thing.
One of the things that I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks, in retrospective about the things I do, is thinking about why I do what I do here on this blog. I have fun with discussions about different topics about life as a believer, theological details, biblical commentary, etc. But one thing that I’ve found that seems to resonate the most with me is to not do such discussions just for discussion sake. The purpose of being a follower of Jesus is not to just get the right thoughts and ideas down pat, but to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing in this time we have on this planet. Theology is OK, but if it does not lead us to being more Christ-like in how we interact with the world around us, it’s just a bunch of noise.
This, I think, is at the root of the Anabaptist movement, both historically in the 16th century and in its apparent resurgence today. You don’t need to be a Mennonite or Amish or any other Anabaptist rooted denomination in order to appreciate this counter-cultural movement. There are a lot of people from across the spectrum of Christian denominations that are finding cool stuff by men named Grebel, Simons, and Yoder and are finding ways of being Christ followers in a world that seems to not really care about Christ that much any more.
So, as I move into this new year, this, I hope, is to be my focus here. As I mention in my about page, I’m seeking ways of how to be “abnormal” in this world, following the one who turned “normal” upside down during his time. Thank you to all who participated and contributed to the conversations here and I hope this coming year will be just as much fun as we seek to discover what it means to be “abnormal” as followers of Jesus.
God bless!
Pingback: Francis Chan on “making disciples” « Abnormal Anabaptist