I just found something on a blog that I have been passionate about. It's the idea that's gaining somewhat of a reputation and is named Ancient Future. It is the idea that our postmodern world greatly resembles the ancient world where the Church was born. Because of that, it is best to look not only to the roots of our tradition (that being Evangelical in general, Pentecostal, Mennonite, Anabaptist – whatever), but to the early Church.
At first we think, "Well, isn't that what my tradition has been trying to achieve all along?", but then we don't even bother to look backwards, and blow the horn of just our tradition as if it has all the answers. OK, that might be exaggerated, but you get the point, right? We don't look at what world they were trying to serve. We don't look at what they were trying to accomplish. Oh, and sometimes we look at what the Church was trying to do, but we hardly try to look for parallels between what they and what our Lord, Jesus Christ did.
OK, it seems that I spilled quite some beans that I might need to gather later, but the point is that because of the similarities between the ancient and the postmodern world we can learn from them more then from our predecessors just a little while ago.
This is the issue that was discussed in a recent conference entitled Ancient Evangelical Future. Destert Pastor has been blogging about it. He's got clips from it. Why don't you take a look at it and respond to the idea in comments. But look first. This is the last post. Work your way back.
