Clarification & Purpose

In many discussions about the need for a Reformation movement within the African American church, it has become clear to me that there are at least two needs:

1) The practice of reformation within the context of the local and extended church community, properly interpreting, developing principles and appling the word of the God to our individual and corporate lives. This is the frontline struggle for sustained discipleship and glorifying Christ in our churches, and this is the pastoral mission.

2) The development of a theological "laboratory" (to quote Michael Mewborn) and forum to speak to the concerns of an African American Christian leadership class and intelligentsia. The long term program of the church's calling in our communities, and the remedying of the many challenging obstacles confronting African American progress rests on such an action. Its concerns are both scholarly and spiritual, and I need a space to think through many of the more rigorous aspect of this dialog without turning off those whose interest and needs are less scholarly.

It is my conviction that this blog cannot successfully address both of these needs, and I routinely discover that when I connect with one set of readers I invariably lose another. To that end, I will soon be commencing an additional blog on Wordpress that will have, as best I can muster, a scholarly focus on theological themes as they relate to the necessities of African American life and Christian praxis. I will probably begin with an effort to profile a theology that is informed by the African American experience and that speaks to the tradition of Black scholarship, e.g. the applicability of Liberation Theology to the Black Church calling, or the necessity of a Biblical, Reformed theology has the foundation for a renewal movement in the Black church...in fact, I think I will start with the latter.

This site, "Rock of Offense", will have more of a pastoral and devotional emphasis, focusing on the biblical text or themes that speak to the daily concerns of our Christian walk.

Please stay tuned...