Church Re-envisioned (Lord may it come quickly)

I found this at
http://www.trotank.se/blog/index.php?/archives/2006/11.html

TRO&TANK
a very interesting (both fun and educational) and inspirational blog.
It originates inSweden but has as much English content as it does Swedish. So if your bjorkennorkum is brokum you can still Particpate.

"Church” will decreasingly mean a place one attends, and will increasingly mean a community to which one belongs, who share a common mission and a common spiritual practice, rooted in a common story of what’s going on here on planet earth. Whether the word “church” (like the word “Christian”) is abused beyond recovery, I don’t know. Let’s assume it is redeemable. One of the greatest enemies of evangelism is the church as fortress or social club; it sucks Christians out of their neighborhoods, clubs, workplaces, schools, and other social networks and isolates them in a religious ghetto. There it must entertain them (through various means, many of them masquerading as education) and hold them (through various means, many of them epitomized by the words guilt and fear). Thus Christians are warehoused as merchandise for heaven, kept safe in a protected space to prevent spillage, leakage, damage, or loss until their delivery. However, if the church is otherwise imagined, it can be experienced as an open community, welcoming strangers as Jesus welcomed sinners. Thus it becomes the main highway of evangelism. And if surprising people are loved there – people who would not be accepted were it not for the good news of the kingdom of God: the poor, the racially other, the politically other, etc. – the church will once again burst with new wine that no old wineskins can contain

"The Strategy we persue" by Brian McLaren