Continuing the Conversation: An Answer for Peter

I'm sorry about not commenting, I thought we had covered all the bases about last chapter in the main posts...

I don't see too much of a conflict between locality/community and catholicity. In fact, I think locality/community and catholicity may be big parts of the answers to the Big Question under consideration here. And let's face it, if we were absolutely sure that denominations (or rather, our particular denomination) were the answer, we wouldn't be having this conversation to begin with...

I don't know whether to call it a "generational" trend or not. What is sure is that hard-core strictly defined denominational churches are getting rarer. Even churches within traditional denominations are becoming more and more "willow-creek-ized" and "CCMified". It's a post-denominationalism of the lowest common denominator. And it doesn't do much for either building local community (as it is geared towards sovereign individual experience and spirituality) or catholicity (as it couldn't give two rips about tradition in either theology, catechesis, or liturgy). I can't recall if I've said this before here, but I'll restate it anyways - the three options I see coming out of the current morass are A) the Morass itself - the CCM/seeker-sensitive/megachurch Borg, B) increasing smaller and more fractious rock-ribbed denominational remnants (esp. among TRs and LCMSers), and C) churches that deliberately cultivate tradition and community, who will be drawn to work together by such affinities despite their "official" denominational backgrounds. I'm in the C) camp, obviously.

Continuing the Conversation: A Question for Doug

OK, for now I give up. I think that as we find things to comment on, we should return to Frame's book, but I want to hop into a side question, for a moment.

Doug: Do you find it odd that we who are doing this blog are both on trajectories away from denominational American evangelicalism?

I'm increasingly focussed on local churches, whose locality is as important as their cooperation, on my view; and on international cooperation, specifically, on Japanese churches working with American churches (there are a number of key, and nation-specific, problems we can address).

You seem to be heading into catholicity, Anglicanism being no more strictly a denomination than Rome or Antioch (albeit Anglicans and especially American Episcopalians often just act like another denomination); and in the missionary wing of that church, no less.

Any observations about that? Do you think this is going to be a generational tendency?