I've been thinking a lot about the latest buzzwords of community transformation and the call for the church to get out in the community and be an agent of change. I have a few thoughts on this that I want to get down for discussion:

1) Obviously, if we are just going out and raking leaves and serving food and painting walls without connecting it to Jesus, no change will happen, we will do no good for the Kingdom.

2) It seems like this is the "in" thing to do so everyone is jumping on board. But sometimes churches need to worry about feeding their own sheep before going out and recruiting some more, otherwise we've got more confused sheep wandering around than we had in the first place.

3) I'm all for community development, love what John Perkins is all about and what he is doing/did in Mississippi and Pasadena, so don't let my cynicism cloud the fact that I am agreement with this issue.

4) Community development must flow from a heart to love and serve God's people, it must be nurtured and prayed over and result from a clear call from the Lord, not just something we think is the right thing to do or everyone else is doing is.

Those are just a few thoughts for now that will help me frame some discussions I want to have in the near future with a few people.