|
The story behind Mercy Seat starts with one simple gut-felt intuition: What if we could create and foster a self-supporting new church, not by trying to be culturally relevant, but through better theology, more faithful and creative liturgy, and a confidence in the peculiar message of the one who bids us to die that we might be born again? Mercy Seat is a creative response to a growing need for critical-thinking, grace-based Christian orthodoxy. Today's urban citizens are, with good reason, skeptical of the history of Christendom, too skeptical, so it seems, to swallow the me-centered spirituality embodied by "contemporary Christian worship." But these same folks are proving to be more willing than ever to try something more concrete and particular than the functionally unitarian religiousity that marks contemporary urban liberal churches. Enter good ol' Trinitarian proclamation--the message that the Spirit who opens up the future and creates life, derives from the event of Golgatha, the event of the love of the Son and the grief of the Father. Hence, the vision of Mercy Seat: to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in creative and socially conscious ways, to become a living laboratory for liturgical renewal, to reclaim the power of the "visible word" of the sacrament, and to empower the worshipping community to enflesh God's grace in the world.
|
