Friends,

I felt energized when I left out cohort last week. For two reasons really. First, I feel so grateful that I have some new friends who are willing to think about what it means to follow God in the postmodern context that we are living in. Second, Ii feel that our dialogues together thus far have been insightful really great. Thanks again to James for leading us last week. I have been further reading Exclusion & Embrace and I truly have been changed by Volf's writing on forgiveness, making space for others and inviting them in. I really pray that we would be involved in transforming communities so that we can make space like that for even our offenders as Jesus did. See my post on that on my newly created blog at www.barryfalke.blogspot.com. Anyway, I am so glad to be journeying together with some like minded people. Let's continue to consider who else would be interested in the conversation.

Our next Cohort gathering will be April 20th at 7:00pm. We will be talking about some topics out of Brian Mclaren's More Ready Than You Realize. This is a wonderful, not to heavy read. If you have a chance to pick it up before next month I would say do it. If not, I am going to try to post or e-mail some segments that we will focus on for next meeting. I am especially excited about discussing the idea of "in/out" mentality in the Christian church. By that I mean the way that most Christians view others in their context as either inside the Christian community or distinctively outside the Christian community. If I remember right, Mark Baker (Prof @ MBBS) also writes about this topic some in his book: Religious No More: Building Communities of Grace and Freedom, InterVarsity Press, 1999.

To begin the conversation, I am wondering how we have seen the church be inclusive or exclusive through the use of "in/out" mentality? Any thoughts?

Posted By Barry