Liquid Church

Another book which I read not so long ago, which has a lot of intertesting ideas as to how today's church can effectively function is Pete Ward's Liquid Church (Paternoster, 2002). Ward suggests that flexibility is essential and that liquid provides a more appropriate image for what the church should be than many of the fixed ones that we more commonly use. As he says - p. 41: "If we are to envisage a liquid church, then movement and change must be part of its basic characteristic. We need to let go of a static model of church that is primarily based on congregation and buildings. In its place we need to develop a notion of Christian community, worship, mission, and organization that is more flexible and responsive to change. The idea of flow is central in this shift of emphasis. Liquid church would work to express itself as a series of movements or flows. As with a liquid, there would be a spreading, oozing, spilling character to these flows." I like that. I fear we try to bottle the church, when we ought to be pouring it out!