Dan Miller Back Mountain Harvest Assembly

The one message that really stirred in my heart after hearing Dan Miller’s passion and the interview with him was what he said about the church’s role in the community. He said that “if you want to change the community, you can’t think about the church first, you must think about building the community.” What I have been hearing over these past two weeks with Gerry Stoltzfoos and this week in Dan Miller is really a heart and passion for those who aren’t in the church, but just for people in general. I think that’s is what sometimes we as Christians struggle with is what to reach people and love them, but wanting to do it our way, bringing them into the church first in order to minister to them. But I think now with the whole emerging church and the idea of being missional we are realizing that we need to meet and reach people where they are at. We don’t need to bring them into the church first. These past two week I’ve always seen the idea of reaching people who may have been hurt by church or don’t really want anything to do with the church because of their presuppositions about the church. And I think that is important and always I think being recognized in the idea of the missional movement. The idea of reaching people where they are at and just loving them, breaking down their presuppositions about the church that they may have had. And we do this by making them realize that we just want to love them and share what God has done in our lives with them and we don’t want to mold them into the image of the church and bring them into where we are comfortable, the church, in order to minister to them. My heart and passions have really been moved these past few weeks in realizing the need for church planting and the need to have the church re-imaged in a sense and think that it is very vital for the church to continually be the best means to change people’s lives.