Reflecting on Dan Kimball on Shapevine

Who doesn’t love Dan Kimball?  I probably shouldn’t ask such loaded questions on a blog but if you know what I mean, you can’t help but appreciate this guy.  Sure, he has weird hair, and he’s from CA (but apparently he’s from north Jersey – holla!) but he really gets it.  I appreciate his heart for non-believers, appreciate how he’s trying to “do church”, and love how he comes across in his books, seminars, and various ways.   We could say this about many people, and praise God.

Dan wrote a couple decent books and his new one is, “They Love Jesus but Not the Church”.  It’s one of those you wished you would have written this but you never would have but whatever.  If you are new to the emergent, emerging church, we need to do church differently conversations and you’re too frightened (or have been frightened off) by great minds like Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, etc.  then you might appreciate Kimball.

Concerning the webcast, one thing that he said that got me thinking was something like this.  Dan tells a story of being picked up at an airport by this couple.  They talk about church, he asks them what he likes about their church and they talk about how wonderful the pastor is.  They love him.  The preaching, the personality …

Fact of the matter is, some churches are too pastor driven.  If you know me, you know why this bothers me so much.  Churches cannot be built around their senior pastor (or their staff in general).  If a church falls apart after the pastor leaves then we ought to question what the church was based on anyway.  It wasn’t Christ.  I know I’m preaching here but this is something very important to me.  It’s like there’s a book out there called “The Personality-Driven Church”.